We go wandering at night and are consumed by fire

And the slow collapse of the shadows of the day
drove us, thinned out the herds
back into our burrows to await
and wait and well we can't spare
with the timing and the Radio Free Dark Recesses of the Mind
it's a slow revolution but once you get once around
guaranteed a prize that's a no-brainer
and the hemisphere's we sank into
corresponding to the angles of collapse
real scientific-like,
and who is to blame them if they are
inquisitive and distrustful because this is
not a game of survival it is just that,
that waiting and the holding of breathe you know
that second when you exhale before you see the light
at the end and then there it is and the city is all around
and you are at the bottom
and they tell you not to look up
which you can't help but doing even if into the sun
but we can divide you, based on this.

I am in no position.
Carry on and the verdict.
Certainly not wicked
because I am a body at rest.
Thousand yards and thou,
lazy river, Bethel and
arms, Sts. of Nevis and
coating, coursing
up the east coast, all
the east coasts in
rebellion, veterans in
business attire thousand
yard staring and Martin
and the market
we got the goods, inshallah.
Insignia broken of philosophy
and its tiny particles off and on,
runic and Latin,
hewn, ad hoc breakdown:
a field day and blues
and whites
over in the late
passing
belonging
to you.

Ward Hill

And I am tired of insisting
and pretending that a higher ground
even exists,
when we already broke the cages,
ran for the door;
they didn't even look
our way.
City to city -
it's just communication
for it's own sake,
we'd rather save it
for the big things,
but of course, first
things first - who the hell
are we, anyway?
Capricorns and Sagittariuses
and Jah and mistaken identity
and your father's political machinations
oh the gears they are a-turning
and justice
moving along city to
ceremony hootin' and hollerin'
increasing the frequency and incensed
ired even, white paint and
industrial ash, locomotion,
(come on come on)
it's just migration,
like your grandfathers, plainsmen
the lot, we just want for
everyone.

Recovery

Not to be contained,
bouncing off RFE signals
and uncaged,
some comic book emotion.
There is a moral here,
accounting for censorship and
genteel morality
but it sure didn't take now
did it? He hasn't moved
in days somebody call a
doctor or a priest
or whatever passes
these days
and I'll.
You know we're trying
to start a life
without all the whispers
and fury and backdrop
and cement, some nonsense
about color you know it's
all her side and art
I for one have
sacrificed
my memories just to get this far
down the road
because that is the point of the road
said the sign.
Oh dear friend
we can see it in your eyes
beyond
and yes they hoped to spared you
the pains of being grateful and
self-hating but it's a careful
balance that I've gone and upset,
we'll have to operate.
Lights out.
You'll find he has no problems
accepting charity from strangers,
but only.
Creator and destroyer of a thousand
worlds in his own mind, a fiction in which
he matters, and speaking even
and the flowers;
we'll all be moved.
How've you been? Barely making out
the words beyond their meaning, if even
and why begin the journey
with the uncertainty
and hallowed sanctity of
surrender, and the pious
even, in chorus,
at the gates,
the words,
very well thank you,
not even a question,
having barely moved for days,
not even the gears of the mind,
and I thank you, Are you seeing this?
There's new levels all around us
and landings and spirals and all the celestial
architecture, again, very well thank you
although you moved too fast, blinding to those
with sight, purposes, you see
we weren't,
and deaf to the roar of the gears and motors and the
opening of the gates,
now how can he even know that, deaf as he is?
cured certainly, thank you,
paid in advance,
but having made the trip not daring to partake,
not one for rituals, you see,
and he appreciates the invitation,
but, no, thank you,
once around the walls and I'll be on my way,
and now I've seen everything,
take this down.

A funeral toast:
lest we forget
and forego
the lives we couldn't destroy,
try as we may,
in the making of sense,
in your case,
the fables,
the stories of our children
and respective copyrights
and holders,
this is our moment
I am tomorrow.
Rook takes pawn.
The objective objective behind us,
getting across,
the shortest distance between
two points is magical thinking
and that's how we'll keep score,
at least you are
today.
So for those who have aided our
most joyous of all descents
and their assorted spouses and caretakers,
a row of stars.
And of the queen?
Heaven knows, Jerry,
and is beaming.
Use your imagination.
And o the endless fields,
well,
we'll find a way
as is gravity
bound in eternal servitude
or vice-versa,
and excuse me,
they're gathering outside the walls.

There is no liberation
theory
and we, legion,
in concrete hallways
leave no trace
of particular interest
to the concrete,
or whoever
pretending it to be a prison block
making hostages of
dated computers and accessories
and the dust of generations
we are becoming,
we are coming to rescue
those (we) left behind
- altruism for kicks -
to quote the nameless
builders of a new language
and kill the lights,
you have been a secret
combination all your life
haven't you? haven't you?
talking low,
developed and backstoried
you know your dog doesn't
give a damn that you're
vegetarian right
an exfiltration
- we have been filtered,
of connotation perhaps
perhaps -
and man was that a cardboard age
thinking we could go
through any door left unlocked
and that we'd maybe want to

and I was like
a vision in a dream,
polemic, Dante melded
circumscribing prescripted
dis-aster
lucky as shit
a pint
and sized
to wit
writing my stunted little lines
an der Theke a throw-
back but lacking in rebel
qualities for the literal
carving, a Nativity scene
in plaster, asbestos
cough, silicon and valleys
of the cats and reeds
the instrumentation a soundtrack
to a silent film, rushed &
rushing and past, having
graduated, bergauf, o'er
the waves lapping on foreign
shores and, burning, illuminating
a foreign sun and libraries
where you can't even read the
books, Jesuit, the dagger and
to wit, the comedienne's library,
a Siberian husky, flocked to
by confused faithful lest we
confuse clarity with with with
glass, and polemic, and vision,
medically, slow-handed
and unsure as the day is
uneventful, sacred, our sun
wished upon, in the manner of
the ancient Greeks, and Helios,
the hoary god of automobiles,
is enraged, going so far as to
threaten embargo,
of the world unite,
binded, and vine-lands, masonic
and a trek through Delaware,
having heard it described once,
misleadingly, as America's Switzer-
land, we are all
highway, up and down,
more than its compound building
materials, you go on, a comedian
telling jokes to himself, this
voyage, ambition that you can't
can you dear Iago, proven
has science itself, beaten
, still standing, the Minnesota
Vikings, perpetually side-burned in
this, this vision, cauldron tending,
if not armor-clad, downfield,
a tough call, still standing
and modern accoutrements,
geiger counters among others,
awaiting their urgency in
some mimicry reflex, line
the shelves, scrape the skies,
supporting walls of sound
and noise, indiscernible secrets:
foreign transmissions- at
least from this altitude,
awaiting a response:
you made your bed,
you can unmake it.
It's all right,
and the stars and minor
inconveniences -
Schicksal,
Schatzi - move
gently along -
prices of admission unrelated
to maximum capacity
per the city fire department
to say the least, Jesuit,
missionary firemen,
Pyrrhic pyres,
and all that jazz,
Jesus wants you to
jazz, yeah
stamp your ticket,
move gently along, Man
bars, fluid
I think I know this one
flowing across Europe and such
to some sea, highly irrelevant
and honest and mild in
temperament, he sat and
imagined conversations outside
like the river, irreverent
but good-hearted, functionally,
flowing, Atmen, Mystic,
keeping you informed
flowing.
Bring on the music
unlinked, tonal, shrieking
all our history,
a cry for bystanders to
remain
passive,
private and that's class,
keep on rolling Atlas and
the 18-Wheeler and the
winningest soundtrack,
click,
prophets prophetic - this
a type of type-casting
well suited to history -
it's just dust,
standing by,
release slowly your burden
and shuffle off to Buffalo
with the drums,
taught skin, fletchers,
don't ever forget
we're building an army
and here, insignia,
hisses, feral - now wild -
an embrace of what was
and what will be, science
and history tells those who've
already decided
in their fevered dreams
and they call out our delusions,
don't they? Listening
behind closed doors -
not,
mind you,
to us,
your paranoid value,
building interest,
arches and across
this desert landscape
not playing our game
and streaks in the sky
of the untargeted,
building collapse, and
the material components,
chemically unchanged,
but oh the noise! and
the symbolic tension, doubled
a point and counter
chained to the wheel
but at least at a constant
level as our elders
so to speak, with their
so selective memories
and generational conspiracies,
skips on the record, reluctantly
giving voice to the lie
as we you and I atrophy
sterile
as
apocryphal words,
cadenced,
keep
us
(reluctantly)
going
or coming
thus: perspective.
Having left behind
lists
and monuments and
favorite songs
out-of-context
we move, drift into the
next room
to feel out the crowd,
having left.
Landed
and horizoned, journeyed
academics, or soldiers,
these times blend
together, and contrast
and they move
as well
if not better,
gently along,
fiercely defending their
respective domains,
kings of their wilds, and
queens, Greek Gods
dominating their respective
domains, or the respective
diminutives, and
fabled, unrestrained by
theological bounds, master
plans, foresight in the
crippling sense,
everything in the crippling sense -
sunlight,
the people, supporting walls
and existing just for this
location, moments, and if
you believe that, have I
- got an expedition
for you, skipping ahead,
forget you
and your traditional greetings, may
they be relegated to history's
dustbin: anthropology, and I
shall make my career
on their resurrection,
ain't that a racket, Jesuit?
If you'll pardon the intrusion
into a diminutive not my own
but sometimes the needle gets
stuck, a metaphor for appreciating
moments like these,
when you come home early,
my overreliance on failure
as a means to learn and
resulting aversion to success
because knowledge and science
and pop
clink of glasses
awkward ten seconds
rinse and repeat
and this in all earnestness,
to better years,
underappreciated Babylonian God-kings,
the political-philosophical justification
for tomb-robbing, which all present
agreed is best handled on a
case-by-case basis, but in an
ideal world, in an
ideal world,
but I am just fixating on the
architecture and
the painted marble and
oh those crazy Bolsheviks
and their antics, be sure to tune
in, next year, this
is decided, three, two
candles and well it's not
quite a book, but just assume
the last few chapters - the future
and rule-setting, liberty and
Shore Patrol done rounded me up,
and these days I have been
feelin disenfranchised,
because I have too much respect
for the process, ideal world,
as I like it, and
our summers
were seasons and not symbolic
and there will be more, such
reasoning, justifying, well,
what have you got? Try
harder: What do you want?
So, a dialogue, we have progressed,
a revolution, or rotation,
things to be cherished, apparently,
and fires to be lighted to justify
their existence, and the dullness -
I do not remember being
born without memories,
as they did not remember being
born into God-hood, so here we are,
drinking with dinner
and Thank god for that with, Schatzi,
cause our destiny ain't in no science
book,
downbeat, such a dated score,
goddamned El Dorado, but still,
we trek, against all odds, sister
to a hope, tragic yet
yet yet
move gently westward,
you don't need to know more,
temperatures,
rationales,
but it sure helps, realistically,
not the world we're exploring though,
one
last chance to make a break for
the coast
and the fireworks
and feeling, raise
your (third) glass, not without
some condescension,
to wit,
pride for all the unread shelved
books in this library,
it's the easy way
to learn,
hab ich kein Bock.