ODE

OUTSTART

We have moved--
Excitement's wisps

waiting to die, sitting up-
on the rear of the body &

oiling Th'Gears as we Roll'round &
around: slipping/flipping, revolving

in our dour Values, children
of Chance, parents of Paradox! Despair's
bedraggled, Death's natural trophies

& so light-headed in Th'Self-illustrated
Limelight of Our stilled thoughts

Th'Last's most intricate, ice-sunken
images, mere figurines, moths by th'millions

made into a decomposing mathematics
now boughs of Darkness bursting over us

Glory's gaudy webs, grievous perfumes

called to a coalescence (pale at their Past,
flowering prodigies & deliberate brutes

all along) by the Voice of th'moving
days betrayed into mere choruses: O,

Yesterday's sunshine's silvery legs
through Memory's annoying mazes; or

All tomorrows gathering exhortations of
Serenity in the florescent

dances & brawls: Kindness to the crush;

the clenching, the killing
curtains of our unconcern, that
slaughtering Slack, so unfeeling,
Woe ( the one-liner )

Chaos' thousand tunes & other fast-fingered
impulses' lazy Songs (sweetly but undeclared

running) all over loneliness' noisy leaves
up Summer the chimney, bemoaning

berries, frozen lonely lakes in the Wake
of loveliness, O we have moved,

half birds (almost exiled off th'skies
for our lies too-earthen),

some nameless moustache
without explanation, camouflaged

amongst trees nervously parceling out
th'shade, gone into the business of

Love-for-profit, tossed too careless
upon some Loss or another, broken, O

ye poor rams, ewes & kids lapping up
th'milk! of smiles, endless smiles
like drizzling wasps... Hey!

Hold it! What was that?! "Yesterday?"

Yes, it was Yesterday--Wasn't it!

O, that such a grand Phenomenon
which came over us suddenly,

out of a lick of stars & right in the middle of
a clear day (raining its thundering

altruisms out of Arrival's rainbows
& in a lightning: hovering all over us) which

just as suddenly slipped-slick Away!
too lightweight even for its terror-- Yes,

I would say: WE HAVE MOVED, yes, we

wrapped in Winter's wide margins, Carrion's
quiet keep, counting & counting

curdled Ideals once/or, maybe even--to be
Summer's hot satins, yes, we

(Familiarity's fickle cocks), and at
noon?! O God, grant us a happy life

--We might not deserve it, of course, but
we certainly could use it

             ... Let us not
find ourselves by Humiliation's too-detailed
maps but Possibility's stony penguins
... Why is it God answers not
the questions Man asks? --BECAUSE
what question can Man ask

that Man won't eventually answer
(to his own satisfaction) himself,

taken & shaken in th'chestnut shudders
of Fall while th'waiting snows are weeping

th'shivering whispers that hang from
the tall cheerings of Man where he lies

blinking beneath the blankets' barbarous
embroideries & null embellishments:
the Deep Woods the World's as-yet warm

Wounds congealed into th'Snows
over Mind's cleared-out meadows,

eternity poisoned to a point, over all

those intellectual hills with a
hey nony nony ney nony nony

Spring's leafy shrieks, the thickets
whispering Soul's nothingness (either

way) nony ney all by himself Man only ney
& while moaning with the Wind's only, motionless-
ly meaning but himself only ney amongst

Dread's decapitated daffodils only
& while the shivering leaves of should

... all th'wings of Th'World keep drumming
ney nony ( darkness' impatient doves

outrunning the lake's little steps, the leaves
of the Autumn) thundering from the looms

Arrivedershit! chum, arrive there

the been's blackening butterflies
& other vinegared innocents that, faithless,

falling, melted under snows--Once, what was

that?...                                               
Yesteryear's...?             

                 ... into their pelters of tears
now gasped an Anguish of Spring's opulent giggles

The Answer's swift swans & slippery sufferings

... hurting to wake Th'World (unmoved &
clicking still like a string of slangs in Th'Sacred

ticking ).