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 ).