from: The Clown (1959) for Wallace Berman

  1/The Unknown, the Classical
Jugglers in Xanadu,
acrobats in Creet.
The essential is always balance.
Swing forward on springed feet,
hands up, spin & reach,
cartwheel, bounce on earth
& roll into a new dance.

Re-mime the beginning
of Time & Dream, insane,
grace. Dazzle the demons
who watch you fall.

Ravens crying: Ave! Ave!
striking him & eaglets
bit & stripped him of his ribbons.
Ave! Ave!

Maccus, Pappus, Cicirrus.
Faces painted on faces,
blossoms on humpback cranky forms.
What we will be:
warty gourd nose bent down
to punch a hole in the chin,
leering toothless mouth
& a patch of flaming hair
sprouts atop the white face.

*

The roots which hold a poem to earth
reach to suck out the wordless instant.
Send out the clowns.
Box & bash each other.
Struck sideways by the goat-bladder.
Goosed by the staff.

He-who-got-slapped first wore the centunclus,
rags & patches for a bull's-eye.
Harlequin's eye-blinking diamonds.
Christ's cross. Diversion is speed.

*

On flag shanked horses
minstrel, drug peddler
wander to stopped wagons
offering amusement.

Medicine show showers handbills
like dove feathers on mud roads
leading to the Church.

Beneath stained-glass, stone demons,
Christ arose thru a trapdoor,
sulphury smoke belched from Nebuchadnezzar's
red-hot furnace scorching papier-mâché Hell.

Machines unwind flying angels,
thunder, wind & Dossenus flees
from God's butt-clubbing love.

 

Lamentation
for Zap the Zen Monk

Cold grove to grow pot in.
Wet dew sops thru
sleepingbag.
The hibachi's all rusty,
crudded with dove shit,
dung of cranes.

Wind
topples down bamboo tent
& tender flesh bruises.
Only the mind hardens like ice
to crack & melt into a stream

which perhaps
touches roots (like nerve-ends)
closest to this dream of earth.

 

Lamentation
for Jack Spicer

Sir, I'm out of touch with stars.
The bar's closed. We go
stumbling down Grant to Columbus
to the Park to somebody's parked car.
Somebody says, Let's all go to Ebbe's.
Says Ebbe, Sure, why not, let's all go.
We're gone in the car, piled in the back
seat, breathing wine on the windowpanes.
This seven years ago. Tonight

It is pain to realize you're dead,
your last book on the shelf,
your last words to a nation
not indivisible but invisible;
a nation that will never will its mystery to poets
who even in Greece weren't poet enough to handle man
nor touch the dark forms. Gone.
Maybe that night it was Marco
who fell back upon a park bush.

We left him there to sleep.

 

Oyes! Thy seed shall be as the stars of heaven
St. Clement of Rome

In hope I offer a fire-wheel,
    12 stars a-sparkle on the black
waters of the well,
    jasmine & rose leaves
stolen from an albino hare
    & 5 lily petals
pilfered from the dove

    knowing stuff of tribute is only for the hand
O Jesus what to awaken the sleeping heart?
    Off with my robes, roll my rings & coins
down cobble, shave my head, set fire to my flesh:
    a star instinct follows?

    Light thru wound & wings
break thru my back:
    wings of light, wings of snow
O Christos! your four mirrors

    turn the fox blind,
give sight to the mole,
    my face four times
broken in your light
    O Christ!
I seek sight beyond glass

    & offer a fire-wheel,
12 stars a-sparkle on the water's black
    disc, jasmine, rose leaves
stolen from an albino hare & 5
    lily petals pilfered from the dove.

                                        [December 1965]

 

The Bath   1
Movie over, we draw a bath & in it
    face each other,
legs around hips in wet embrace.

    Splashing in the jug
I upset, then sink our daughter's fleet of
    plastic boats
docked along the tub's rim.

  2
Arise with dream speed from the steam.
    Sea beasts
shimmer in fogged mirror. Ah

the dance now is only dance,
a race to cold sheets thru
chill hallway.

 

New Year's Poem: 1967

Why it's my old friend the piper
back from last year's dying, blind
in one eye, one lung lost
hard of hearing, toothless, drinking
blackberry wine from a paperbag

leans on a car to watch the people go by.