I

Recuperation

in SILENCE

chains reel rope ladder miasma

not a magic lamp/3-wished-wellisms

pioneer trail worst secrets keys in rainstorms

suppose to see no, you don't have to be catholic

associations of unhappiness

CHAINS REEL

Hot. Not sure. Night to day; or light, succumbing to darkness.

I lie, embodying the pendulum,

as it falls either way.

II.

Insects buzz through rotten cloth netting.

I'm scared.

Because I'm surprised.

III.

Not slated for death. Heart says so. I am lesson, gradually shit less blood gain more weight lose yellow round corners mine eyes. Bed drenches sweaty prayer for redemption-of dreams and wake, thoughts about a hospital-

too far away, to do any good.

IV.

If I answer, they won't find me rattling rickety bamboo door

the slack-eyed look on lizard-infested ceiling

searching for white man's reason

he didn't pay his bill.

Rope Ladder.

Rung: Motorcycle.

Moving one hundred-sixty miles an hour,

slow to a hundred two-oh. You're coasting a ten speed down a little teeny hill.

So mellow and smooth…

Go no-handed, watch the Nevada moon rise.

Step: wind wobbles.

Sometimes small bushes look all avid, and alive. They resemble old men, and forgotten animals, roamed too long ago to remember themselves.

Rung:

Two-something

moving together mirror pond reflections

each side of pavement.

I brake.

Stretch: Elastic.

Meet your death at seventy, not forty five.

I sound my horn. The wind crushes a pathetic little beep.

Finish line: Gods' prize.

Two antelope foreground-

frozen

Cut

them down

their middle.

Miasma

I came from the hospital.

They smile

It is twelve-o'clock

Time for class break

They never go to the Veteran's home

You can tell.

Amazing youths

Borrow another minute of Earth-time

End ignites.

I want to post a sign

Because we should know better

Warning!

WRITERS of LIFE:

One thing, seen a man mid-step, gasping-breath. Man fit, climbing mountain.

Vetran man, six pace cross of cold linoleum floor. Note oxygen supply squeaky-wheeled back-shiver, tubes red chapped nose. Dissolve this scene in lung-wrack convulsion. Worn institutional pattern traps froth-spittle was-once health, sprayed pm ground. …?? Take-Three. Thanks! And forty years' mad white sticks burn his glum-time fingers.

Not a magic lamp/3-wished-wellisms

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hey Jimmy, howya doin'?

Cool. Finish that assignment?.

Sorta. You?

Wrote it last night.

Lemme hear.

Okay (rustles the stack of mimeographs, dropping two to the ground), here yago.

"Women indulge in self-pitying romantic fallacies, as men engage in acts of violence, and war."

That's the title, or the lead-in?

Both.

I don't get it.

Women like to be depressed; but they don't.

What's that suppose to mean?

Men don't like killing chaos and mayhem, but on some level, they do.

You're backing that up, I assume.

I concluded it last night, hearing the famous poetess peer her words to our all-too-willing audience. We were wet with sorrow, as her tiny tragedies condensed, and rained their depression upon us.

Yea. I remember that prose reading. What was her name?

Sylvia. Not that it matters. What matters is, how'd you feel afterwards?

Like hell.

But why?

I don't know.

But you do.

So? What about it?

You should say something if it bothers you that much. You could have stood up and walked out.

I should have. I also should have stopped the dude who asked too many questions Tuesday. It's a tragedy I live with. I should kill some innocent people, and suture my ineffective emasculated self with blood.

To be a manly man?

Yea-be an anvil for her over-feminine sledgehammer. Her dreary work depressed an entire crowd.

You're right. I wanted to leave too. I enjoy poetry… not depression. I rain on enough parades all by my self.

Let me ask you again: Why didn't anybody stop her?

Too embarrassed. We've been programmed to respect elders, to be too polite.

Wrong. We need to suffer together.

I don't believe you.

We're afraid to tell the truth. Suddenly, you're ostracized. Other people blame you for wrong thinking, and other heinous crimes. You are dangerous. You will call their bullshit next. You become a scapegoat for all the spineless moments your heart spoke, and your brain negated action.

The dart sticks. I hate to think we're staid to pain.

Hey, you got the time brruthr?

Ten-fifteen. You're late.

(He doffs a rumpled backwards baseball cap, bowing a Renaissance flourish.)

Until tomorrow, Jimmy-boy.

Until tomorrow then, my liege.

What a ham. But I think about our conversation, all night long.

And the next morning,

Excuse me…

What is it?

I have a question for you.

Yes? Please make it brief, I have acquiesced to teach a class this afternoon.

Remember the lecture yesterday?

With Proctor Bramble?

No. With Sylvia Gin.

Oh yes. About Massey, and modern reductionist thought.

Bingo. Why did your faculty sit there with stuck-on smiles?

We must our respect visiting professors.

Is letting a learned person make a fool of themselves, giving them respect?

Mr. Professor, if you can't pinpoint squalor and make it public knowledge, you have no friggin-right to teach at all. There, I've said it. You may kick me out of here, if you have the hypocritical balls.

He walked to his office.

I was late for class.

Pioneer Trail.

Brick [concrete] bloody massacre.

See ghost, hand in face

grief.

Who-WhatWhere?

Last question answered by

[erasure]

dying breeds'

dire sorrow.

Watch

the Indian still.

Who cares Who

now everything's gone?

Worst Secrets?

How could it be wrong?

I felt guilty though. I was torn. Life's unnatural, when doubt invades. She took me to the doctor, who stuck his hand

up my ass.

From masturbation floor rubs, for baby sitter tender treatments; I learned: Sometimes best friends aren't best enough. I thought. Some things, you can't tell anyone.

Learned women were aggressors-stand back and let it happen. I had a pellet gun hidden in the hall. I'd blow out streetlights at night, with its twenty pump action. If Gummers had known! The still exploded in a camouflaged basement hideout. It was only a little fire.

The people in gradeschool, thought I was a drunk.

I blamed it on our furnace.

I experimented. I was a speck of dust in an ever-expanding black, hearing the scratch of ghost-speak. Those thousands of overlapping whispering voices… I'm fraught with dreams beyond teachers' understanding all those… whirling mechanisms no movement yet to be devised… I'd make them. No time for girls. Girls are dangerous. Wire strung haphazardly-outdated surplus-scavenged gismos on shifts of tangibility, where ether-energy pulsed grids I wove, in stolen copper's Tesla-lightning hell.

"When are you going to get that barbed-wire mess off the roof!?" yelled my mother.

It knocked me on my ass.

Five hundred volts, my father figured.

But the cannon, that really pissed them off.

The eight foot oxy-acetylene PVC sewer skud, topped with a neat AvGas ball. "You probably started that fire!" (currently in re-entry orbit) I heard mom think, from the symphony, through the broken windows littering the

launch site.

Secrets: Ask away. That was a long time ago. And you're right. Old events. The ancient me, stuffed with still-life memories.

It's funny now.

Mostly.

New secrets are better. They are more colorful. They glow in the dark. 1988. Three days from 1989. Ko Phangan. Thoughts about illusion. Been thinking a long time, about it. What is… it? Night. I'm straight. You're the moon. You rinse me in the phosphorescent ocean. All I am, is dissolving. Here, I begin to go mad. Relativity is my gate-Speed of light, the end-moraine. Watch the world go granular. Who am I? I am; nothing but ideas. I stare my hands to Buckeyballs, body disappearing. Which thoughts are mine? Which other's?

It is hard to go to America, and lightly admit, you're going insane.

Real secrets though? That's tough. I had one, but I told it recently. I used to think I was honest. I saw through that. I had an affair. Admitting used to scare me. Then the sex club in San Francisco. Interesting. Fool around with men. Something a writer would do. Curiosity, mostly. What else? There is something, in the corner of my mind. The stolen car? No.

There it is. Drug dealing!

No; not it either.

What about the cloak we swaddle round our secrets?

I.e. What are secrets made of? (Secret.) What you don't know, is more fun than what you do. We all love secrets, don't we?

Secrets.

Maybe, we don't want to know some.

(ourselves)

Have I spilled your mystery yet?

KEYS IN RAINSTORMS

Through tiny slit in infinity: Life

we give our utmost not to see.

Brilliant showers of stars crammed

stun black opposites

depress ecstasy form beyond words.

Rains in silver glitter, immeasurable

(no weight of space)

quantum presence

not enough to injure, only light

ignorant ways.

Thank God for umbrellas.

Suppose to see

yourself. Can't look.

Don't know how I claim

I feel this person trying to release

parts inside key holes

jammed with toilet paper

What if

I can't stand looking ?

No, you don't have to be Catholic.

Two fat tears splat the sidewalk, one after the other.

It's hospital talk. Ex-lover on the line.

Pumps more quarters.

"You're okay? I know."

I unlock velo slowly. Listen.

Man has sparse red hair drifting greasily to a tank top.

Warm. Slight breeze. His hands are shaking he's

"Did you ever consider… calling a priest?"

He covers his eyes. Turns to face anonymous wall.

drunk too many cups of coffee.

Talking: gone the phone. Ghost in bed, dying AIDS.

Last rites. Last friend. Last purloined moments speech

before silence.

Associations of

Unhappiness:

Thin: Fat:

emaciated quenched

starving immobile

passion fear

fire unused energy

Welcome to America.