Every Revolution Spins a Wheel

Radical is as proverb does.
There's no lining up the armies
Of the night in neat, shining rows.

The truth is routed by alarms
And rumors of patterned events.
Look up. Every light sprawls about

Burning at ease. Commanders' tents,
Unfurled clouds of glowing gas doubts,
Are scattered so haphazardly

No crumb-telescope-wielding ant
Could perceive, even hazily,
An original battle plan.

Still Life with Mussels and Shrimps

A Van Gogh reproduction
On a bathroom wall cheers me
For ridiculous reasons.
Something in me is relieved
To be reminded failure
Is an ordinary part
Of extraordinary art.

I am immersed in failure,
Like a fish in water, or,
More appositely, a whale.
I take my meals in its depths
And surface only for words.
I've been a long time drowning.
Bone worms and scrimshaw seek me.

This Is New

"The scroll is made of soft sheep leather, measures 39 yards by 25 inches, and is about 800 years old — which makes it the oldest complete Torah in the world...."

News. Item:
The oldest
Scroll ever

Found complete,
At least since
We've kept score,

Discovered
Under heaps
Of mistakes,

Within the files
Of mislabeled
Purities piled
In libraries

Ancient and rare,
Like that of the
Learned scholars
Of Bologna,

Has been dated
With precision,
To the decades
Before the height

Of gothic love
For misery,
For suffering,
Twelfth century,

Whatever that means
To the Christians and
Assimilated
Jews. I'm here to write
That meaning is not

Everything. God,
It's not anything.
It's what the readers
Of poetry, God
Bless them forever,

Say it means to them.
I only count breaths
Necessary to
Enunciation
Of truths others wrote.

It's June. Vancouver,
Dourest city, shines
In the borrowed light
Of midsummer nights'
Dreaming. I'm so done

I'm barbecued. I'm
The last professor
In the business men's
Cafe.  Here we go,
Into the woods, now
And forever--gone.

Camper of the Week

New Life Island, 1973.
I've memorized far more Bible verses
Than any other born-again camper.
I'm ten years old, ready for my reward.

The Delaware River parts around me.
On dress-up night, some demon possesses
Me to compliment a girl with Q-tips
In her hair as part of a weird costume

Unfathomable to me by saying
I like how she wears "tampons" in her hair.
I know it is wrong but I don't quite know
How wrong or why.  She grimaces. Given

The prize for camper of the week despite
My faux pas, I, who know more than a boy
Should know about the dictates of Bronze Age
Deities attended by young shepherds,

Get ready to go home to New Jersey.
Some New Jersey awaits every camper
And every shepherd, this world or the next.
Why do I know this, who knows so little?

June

Truth to tell, I like the smell
Of a smoky campfire. So long
As I'm not soaked or snowed on,

I'll take the stink of woodsmoke
Over the bites of bugs and cleanliness.
I never wanted to be next

To godliness, thanks. The crab
We bought at the pier alive
Boils with applied life in death.

We're going to eat the damned thing,
Even though we don't how
To safely, properly cook it.

Just keep it boiling long enough,
Until every shell's red as fire,
Until the edible corpse floats,

And you might survive your instinct
To tear apart some plant or beast,
Some combination, to survive yourself.

Sonnet for the Stranger Who Saved My Little Career

We're the last of the middle class
North Americans, in hock
Up to our eyeballs, seeking
Yet another mortgage, yet

Another loan, so that the people
Squatting leech-like on the veins
Of depleted capital love us,
Count us among the reliable

Worth lending more disaster
To. From here they don't appear
So awesomely terrifying.
Bank clerks. Ha! What banker

Ever wrote a proper poem? Oh,
Right, the man in the four-piece suit.

Fire Poop

"The literal, physical fragmentariness of these objects..."

Is just smoke.
Tree poop is air.
Yeast poop is booze.
Are we getting anywhere?

Bug poops are specks
Bacteria love. Bacteria
Poop something pure
And invisible as God above.

Poets poop words. Natural
Historians poop facts.
There's no unsaying.
There's no going back.

The second law follows
From the last as the first.
What to one thing was useless
To another is better. And worse.