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  Exhilaration. Long song rising spontaneous,

  a song from opera rarely performed, unknown,

  he owes to Pyotr Ilyich and would embrace him

  for it were he alive. (Somehow had been most

  moved by those his sufferings Pyotr could never

  share. For songs of love, for melody, this man

  had few or no competitors.) Major discovery late

  that same morning: no moment dedicated in toto

  to itself could be other than joyful. Can recognize

  joyful that have not spoken it for eight decades?

  No “sitting”: with sore back, desperate legs & arms,

  interminable cramp & dormant buttocks (allegedly

  existence-in-the-moment): you call that by the holy

  name of joy? How can one live-in-moment when

  it depends on previous moment and breathes into

  the next? When care has terminated in the realm

  of meaning (determination to do good to animals,

  humans, cultures, societies); when it has fainted

  in a sandpaper wind of wounded hope, depression,

  (life as the preview of the realm of hell); when there

  is nothing left to do can count achievement in its

  repertoire; when all’s absurd and thus acceptable—

  then and then only, sing the melody by Gaia, by the

  Illusion! Then and then only can moment and the joy

  be imbricated on each other: for why condemn an off-

  hand moment to misery? Carpe you imbecile! Why

  not? What else can there possibly be to do and matter?

  ii)

  That you, who filled a life heavy as lead, mournful

  with cries and curses, could suddenly love like a

  lion this dying world, this pourriture of time, this

  perishable race! And suddenly be seen to smile

  when asked how the hot time of day would sit with

  you, be heard to answer, it is fine, f, i, n, e,—as if

  meaning held in such terms your state of mind, this

  was akin to “miracle.” Brought by the sunflower.

  Next a.m.: sun’s a stalk three inches off the ground.

  Flower & leaves all gone. Her light is smothered. A

  traveling rabbit ate the show and left no calling card.

  Foreword to the whole garden perishing of drought.

  2. torture: a rage

  Imagine a person who lays on other persons

  cri/mi/nal/ly and with rash gain of wealth,

  a problematic in which they will be trapped

  for the remainder of their lives and which,

  short of the arts of geekdom, they will not,

  in a zillion years, be capable of solving.

  Means that, for all those countless eons, the

  system will engender problem after problem

  which men will waste so many hours of blood

  & life resolving, assuming they can be resolved,

  not to bring into mention, or to amendment,

  the most excruciating anguish ever suffered,

  amounting often to blind and unadulterated rage.

  As passion for “security” continues to melt down

  every aspect of culture, of human intercourse—

  all human persons legally become an endless

  list of names, i.d.s and passwords—which they

  will find impossible to pin into their memories.

  All this goes by the terms “extreme frustration”

  and “learned helplessness.” At the sad end, any

  advantages the system may exhibit are lost in the

  disaster of the mind. All revolutions kill at the least

  one generation. La conputa is sure out to kill me.

  Imagine now grabbing a single techne criminal

  (for there are many) and keeping him at mercy. Let

  us say “him” it is the simplest, no way prodigal “her.”

  Mind plans, to show your bona fides, to prove that you

  are very-very and quite close to madness, a form of

  misery felicitous. Take first the criminal and free his

  testicles from their worn sack. Assemble the vast sums

  of money, stocks and bonds, the criminal has gotten.

  Open the body, skull to toe, causing as much by way

  of pain as possible—all this without determining said

  body. Record whatever screams the criminal may utter.

  Stuff into cavities “family treasures,” gelt, shares, and

  documents. Skin the abomination and trash remainders.

  Then archeologize a burial mound in the archaic fashion.

  Cause death-gods’ hairy scalps to show above the sand

  at the pit’s floor. Lay burning coals into the pit and lie

  the living body on them, then cover up the mess with

  shit & sand. You have now dealt with one honored and

  honorable to his society & yours, gladdened by women,

  most prodigal in gifts & fat exchanges; one decorated

  by many kings & presidents, granted abundant riches &

  rewards. At least, Villon rode high on sky. Read R.I.P.

  3. vital signs (the poltergeist)

  i)

  Take from the night. Walk in young light

  with birds exploding at the heat. No one

  around. How could there be: you have no

  relatives close by—those at the very ends

  of earth living the lives you cannot feel

  within your bones? You think those lives,

  you think repeatedly: find the connection!

  There has been an ablation of all “family.”

  What is this: to be prisoned, locked inside

  one life and never to get out, no matter what

  the inside quantity “compassion”? They take

  your vital signs before announcing “you die

  of ‘this or ‘that.’” Medical Genius One says

  “this,” Medical Genius Two says “that.” And

  death has all dominion, never dies. A figure

  sways and comes toward you with little steps,

  the steps get smaller all the while and they will

  disappear completely at last breath. She takes

  you in her arms. The times have died before

  you—“waiting for Godot.” Or was it god they

  meant? (Critics have sworn it.) Or Ludwig

  Wittgenstein? Or how about Duchamp? Mini-

  malists evolve your shroud, breathe on the

  fire cremates you. Those other lives you can’t

  experience make themselves manifest. Collect

  the knickknacks, take them away to fill some

  other house with snacks. Can call those stuff.

  And you need far more time to throw stuff out

  or to dispose of it than it took life to die-for and

  to accumulate. A loss of value fast overrides &

  you & yours. No one accepts donated life no more.

  ii)

  The sun bursts out beyond these hills, those trees

  begin to burn, you sweat your body out reaching

  the top incline. With heaving breath, you wait a

  little, before descending to the house. Rip off the

  clothes, the socks, the shoes. Your poltergeist

  hides single sock and you’re left with the other.

  You waste unnumbered hours searching for sock.

  Whole house departs. A whole house disappearing

  day by day—because the
poltergeist. So there you

  go, there have you gone! Smoke rises highest yet

  above those loving hills at life’s fondest farewells.

  4. burial mound north

  i)

  Dream. Was it a dream? How can you tell

  when the whole night has been a semblance

  of awake, the first three morning hours as

  well. A tender odor—as if some female soul

  had been nearby. Odor di femina. Must have

  been dream: no one’s nearby. Da Mooze?

  Too much perfume n’ sex for that in this

  befuddled air. Your fingers ache to follow

  and pursue—grasp only air. The Aphrodite

  recipe: definitely dream. This is the very last

  striptease you may be doing. Tired of you

  naked to no purpose and with no returns. On

  the other hand, bent on ad hominem foul play,

  Volva high up in her domain at the north pole

  (we’re talking ancient Norse) so many years

  ago, nauseous slunt, with nothing but a kaka-

  demic chair between her legs, disliked your

  boldness in these matters, said so as she had

  done before when dealing with contemporary

  stuff—and she had wrecked careers. Those

  northern priestesses and shamanesses, ladies

  of death & desolation, war, poverty! Knew

  nothing of post-skaldic poesy but gripped her

  chair nevertheless—to fart when dealing with

  postmoderns. Time to die, O time to perish!

  All the foul pain will take departure over to

  “eternal rest.” There’ll be re-entry by and by. A

  leading, kakademic critic, phoenix-like, reborn.

  ii)

  The Mothers in the burial mound. Back into

  them through all yr. offices, yr. studios, yr.

  encyclopedias of collegial knowledge—the

  only manageable entrances. What else is love

  but re-absorption to the primal sea below the

  mound? The earth, they say, is but a floating

  island topped by a single-sided Sumeru, model

  of every mound. The dream hangs in here during

  your whole walk round the block. Resting from

  its exertions. The exaltation lasted very little:

  despair (for the collective) has fallen back into

  depression (far too personal). How short the

  holiday! Yet birds keep singing in the same old

  trees. A path remains throughout the earthquake.

  5. divas

  i)

  Sky sapphires out such moments in the year.

  One sings. Callas, Fleming, Netrebko, Georghiu,

  whichever of the divas (our gorgeous slender

  divas, no longer those fat ladies of the jokes).

  Breaking the spines of demons, lifting the heart

  and hot emotions (“such song’s for the emotions”

  said one shrink), making life tolerable for a brief

  breath. How do I catch in words the utter reach

  of distance, all distance stressed, the elevation

  of a moment like a host—in which all possibility

  is possible, in which every extreme that can be

  intellected reaches its boundary, breaks skull at

  wall, does not transgress its boundary, survives?

  Where have our friends gone that I so loved

  brooking all misery in fellow-feeling? I think,

  I think the wind has taken them. Alone, oblivion

  waits. How speak of it? How sing of it that am not

  singing? How to record it in a book of “angels”—

  supposing “angels” possible within a discourse—

  for voice alone brings out their feasibility? Way

  out beyond the flower, beyond the bird, such voices

  to maintain this creature in existence. And even love,

  the immemorial, buried so deep in universal mire,

  freshened, talking again, speaking and even singing.

  ii)

  What do you know of this, poor dime-and-nickel

  idiots, your heads buried inside your spines, your

  asses plastered on your torsos, with all your “po-

  etry” so called, your holy “writing,” yr. broken lines,

  yr. tortured speculations, yr. miserable disjunctions,

  yr. footling, inexistent propositions: cough, tea, me?

  Branded onto your teachers’ single style—your only

  hope of board and meals the selfsame prostitution,

  drowning the truly-married out in your mediocrity,

  can you not see a proposition perishing, philosophy

  hauled bodily out of its pastures, shattered? Critique

  never acceptable to flaming egos without the love

  of art to balance out the hurt? Home, y’all, Home, out!

  iii)

  To “friends” no longer capable of love for us, that

  wind took out into the depths of winter; and snow

  (the angels’ diarrhea, even the gods’, what else?)

  muting all other matter to itself, all other seasons

  into winter, metamorphosed in a white storm to that

  last level of the ice where the lost maws would howl!

  Howling a silence divas alone may break when they

  raise mornings to the sphere of fire! You’ve heard of

  empyrean have you not? You burying the world in silt,

  in sand, in silence, way back to the Triassic? “Want

  to save planets? Kill yo’self.” You are outdated, obso-

  lete, forgotten. Our gods a’ shivering. Do melt! Melt on!

  6. lungs floating, slick

  i)

  Vast lung of the vast earth: right lung now

  floating. All the indigenous animalcules rising

  and falling in the wrathful soup—since on this

  lung and its green brachiates depends duration

  for their genes. A viscous mass rises from de

  profundis, wafted into the mouths of waiting

  men (slaves of the floating). No longer food-

  consumers. Oil-eaters: the excrement of hell

  they swallow, to then regurgitate for a depen-

  dent “loved-one.” Deep forests: indigenous

  resistance sets barbs will peel criminal snakes

  back from their spines, scorch them alive. The

  cruelty of rise and shine! Thus right lung sinks

  & rises in the selfsame moment, with us paying

  the daily shifting taxes and powerlessly calling

  for a halt. Resistance yelps a halt, flies flags

  in ancient capitals to warn its chiefs the time

  has come: thinking they’ve won a battle when

  they’ve lost a war. Ah Ecuador! Peru! Immense

  Brazil! While the immortal slick spreads further,

  in the lung. Paradise birds fall headlong into it,

  the bat, the viper fall headlong—even the greater

  beasts: cats, mammoths, megatheriidae, massive

  heliovores still lurking in the forest mind, slump

  headlong to the slick. They have no other hatred

  deep as this, as all encompassing, those poor, small

  slaves accumulating wages in the slick, gathering

  not enough, never the threshold of enough. So hate

  a swine sliming its dividends in distant corporations.

  ii)

  Meantime, in the left lu
ng, a small and noxious pit,

  the price of ages rises to the surface, the bones of

  astronomic eons of past lives float upward through

  the slick, revealing structures of a forgotten world

  lived long before the oil. Bird surfaces, with wings

  spread out, and bat, with wings spread out, delicately

  made of dust here, pasted onto the present so that the

  future minds their shapes and destinies. (You see, we

  can insert a line of “poetry.”) Touchingly sweet dead

  universes of dry selves, with all their friends and

  allies, rise in a shower of scales must be humidified

  so that the fossils do not crumble. A spirit knowing

  nothing of the smell of meat rises to sing. The earth

  with its two wounded lungs can breathe again a while

  (not very long for this is finals)—but little momentitos

  so that we may remember how air used to perfume

  our wilderness of heart in love with sheer existence

  when it ran free in our free throats... and unpolluted.

  7. mammoth excretions

  i)

  Back from the cosmo-litical to loco-litical at hand. Zowee!

  The “Rio Rancho” scene in dear old paradise. No Rio. No

  Rancho—nothing new yet in this “New” Mexico. Colossal

  spread of township over desert, pure, unadulterated, un-

  prepossessing desert. A mammoth, vast as the You-S-A,

  roaming this land, shitting as need occurs... and habitat,

  cardboard-compounded, falls where they will. Ugly and

  convoluted, conforming to some “standard taste” no one

  outside has ever heard of. No fences, hedges, shrubs,

  to sign the properties. From space to space in this catas-

  trophe, the urgent shopping malls with all the dreamboats

  known to “ci/vi/li/zi-za/tion.” Walmart, Best Buy, Big

  Mac, or Burger King... all needs are met. But it’s now firm

  the water will be wanting. The sinking aquifers of nearby

  cities will not rejuvenate within some sixty years. All the

  more likely for the excretions to fall back into sand. Where

  will the people go (just like the Anasazi): invade the Texas

  or the Mexico? A no-gold Gold-Rush into the California?

  ii)

  Today an article on Izembek, a Refuge at the very tip of the