8/6   midnight poem

shagadam magadam darkmotherscream
                    line from Vosnesensky.

What's the Russian.  Dark?
Dark mother?  What?
Darkmotherscream?

Who's there   who's   in   the   bed

what are you doing what am I doing what's going on
what now

all translations of  shto vot
shto is   it
vot  one of those words which doesn't translate well
        there was an entire book in the library re
   .
   vot

Into the Cumberland Farms, chips and candy.
I bring a poem in for R who's
beautiful
she reads behind the counter
grinning mischievously
smiling
eyes sharpening on the words
visualizing the senses

the other clerk reads it too
they are
something
         i feel
us in each other
shared.  vivid.

i go eventually
back into the night

shto vot

"sounds like he was uneasy about the way the two of you
were relating"  writes the friend
who has kindly translated a certain phrase
for us and for the truth
or whatever, as they say in here

descriptions of each cough of emotion
each whirling cruelty of percpetion
every gulp of the bitterness we choke
onward it's something to keep us
moving we stave off annihilation
moving we keep on possible
or decreasing into ohwell
who has died of being

strewn again around newspapers
invisible rent checks
puddles of juice in the plastic whosit
in the fridge

curse this pain O
and by nothing whatsoever
those patrolling the edge
Keep Off The Cliff Keep
Off My Ledge
some want that constructed
erector-set dignity of
neardeath everyday struggleon O
some have it

this headache, new newly new
headache.  the root
probing into my stomach
tapping deeper waters hits
aquifer spouting earthy dirtly
wet thick wholeness nourishing
mindlessly bitterness walled in    O
struggleon  whowhere  O you you'll
Die  of   this
                              I'm hitting
new old dangerous territory tell me
is it really gonna get worse than ever

how many cigarettes until the sun rises
how many breaths until the dawn
how many teeth until the face breaks
how many feet until the road cracks
how many senses until the mind cracks
how many cracks until the mind senses
how many gusts until the dust burls
how many smokes until the smoke swirls
how many words etched in how many eyes
how many silences - measure the way
they mesh  our rhythms
dictionaried dumb mourning for anobrainer

slit its fuckin throat and keep moving  the wind
and the night can have this old head

like it were that O

--------------------------
8/6 noon poem
    and 1 pm

maple leaves of summer sunlight shadows
such beauty

over the woodchipped garden purple impatiens

plastic tablecloth protects plastic table

rickety porch rickety porch
that's a word about disease, rickety
like rickets the vitamin deficiency
calling porch part of a structure rickety
means calling it a diseased human
or like a diseased human
how much is my back porch really like
a diseased human?
not much at all.

i think i will call the porch falling-down
or rather almost-falling-down
from now on.