“Mannish Water
Ram Goat Flavor Soup Mix
with artificial goat flavor”
Advertising this?
Really?
Is it good?
It raises so many intriguing questions.
First and foremost…
No, there are too many.
I must have it…
To know.
To take the artificial goat
Into my soul.
Envelope it
As it warms me through.
Then hopefully I’ll know.
Where the artificial goats do roam.
Some days I’m inspired by everything I see in this town. It’s mayhem of beauty. I hear in every sound the ring of perfection. When the sun hits it right, the magic explodes into fractal macabre of color. Intensity, androgyny, moral decapitation, inconsequential activity congealing in one great masterpiece of form, function and majesty.
Many have seen the alternate inversion, equally sublime in darkness. To live here, you must share the secret. At the same time, keep the secret deep in hiding, lest the light escape and burn the eyes of the infidel. Protect it well warriors. Your reversible image is not for all. It may be misunderstood.
What starts so seemingly big, ends in supreme insignificance. A nervous feeling, a throbbing sinus structure, a number of swishing thoughts through the mental membranes–all conspire to fabricate a reality of facts.
Then I look up at the early April Sun, warming my face from more millions of miles away than I can understand. This perspective is not a thought, but shift of reality, and it comes slamming into earth like a meteor, a contextually small particle that can easily disrupt the temporary function of another larger particle.
The science may astound, but it is the vast mystery that fills me. The insignificance of it all is what makes me feel grand.
How did I get here?
You’ll never guess where I am.
In the belly of the Titanic.
Deep in the sinking heart and center.
I return to the scene of the crime.
Ten plus years later.
A hundred million tears later.
Since it all tumbled down.
The city blood rushes on.
Renews itself with fresh oxygen and steel.
Only its memory holds the pain.
Its cells are strong, resilient.
The fire forges a new change.
A broad and ever expanding skyline.
A monolithic heart of darkness.
No intrusion withstanding.
It pumps and breathes on.
I like to be in tune with the music of New York.
So many simultaneous symphonies.
So many psychic notes.
It fills the air in blinding colors.
If you are one of the lucky few.
Who colors do coordinate harmonically.
The instrumentation is beyond richness.
Always approaching train wreck cacophony.
Climax and diminuendo.
The rests are an integral part of this song.
But they only come in long wave frequency.
Once in a strange while the silence sets.
The audience gasps and holds the breath.
Awaiting the next note.
Will it come crashing in again?
With fire and a terrifying chorus of screams.
Will the next bar blind us with infrared.
Anticipation is the element that builds this New York City musical mood.
Martian touches down again on his new blue planet. His red home is long since gone. He’s been to this bar before. It grows familiarity slowly like crystal formations from the salt caves of his youth. This time it seems different. His complexion is somehow paler. His voice is steady with inflections of the native species. Where once situations used to baffle and confuse, he reconciles the mood with modicum of pleasure. The genetic structure unfolds further. Waves of nostalgia pour generously. He now wants to come home to his new home, in the wild frontier of non-chloride social atmosphere. He still checks as his breath deepens. Test it for noxious carbons. It’s safe now. The acclimation has been successful.
Cool people don’t say “touch base”
Or “FYI.”
They’re not afraid to cry
In public places.
Not hiding broken faces.
Cool people never give
A thought to where the time goes.
Even if it goes to waste.
Cool life lives not in haste.
What does the cool one do?
Chilling feverishly away.
Never knowing which part must die
To feed the cool monster inside.
Thundering upstairs neighbor
Where are you going?
Walking back and forth
From midnight to morning.
Your footsteps betray
A sense of unease
A life’s work undone
Malignant ambition.
Is it a family dynamic
That’s left you pacing the miles?
Your mother perhaps who lives downstairs.
A man burdened as someone’s child.
Someday you’ll fly lighter than air
Not even stomp up the stairs
To the third floor, one farther away
Then glide off the rooftop and soar.
Or perhaps your mother may drag you
Flapping and squawking
Up to the top of the nest
And fling you out over the streets of Brooklyn.
If she knows what’s best.
Sometimes, the voices in my head are so loud, they come out of other people’s mouths. The “should” becomes the theme of self destruction. Wayward desires conspire to confiscate the joy of a passion or an honest vocation. If I heed the voices, hurled from surely loving directions, I may become lost in a dilemma of indecision, self reproach, even loathing. Yes, it can be turned against the host–an autoimmune anti agent of urgency.
If the throttle of messages is regulated, there comes a stillness, pervasive and persuading, to ease the force of steel will. A light and modest unleashing can then take place, in the absence of murderous ambitions.
Tarzan and Bunny.
Two sides of the same coin.
My coin.
My grandfathers.
Tarzan was a wild man.
Bunny was a mild one.
In pictures I’ve seen,
The dash and style of the grand one,
The intense eyes of the shy one.
Tarzan got his name from his children—a fearful yet affectionate term, earned by holding the attention of six daughters, with volume, and primal paternal gestures.
Bunny is not so funny. ‘Twas a childhood polio name, perhaps the cause of much hopping shame. The name remained intact, with his wife’s perpetuation biting to the bitter end.
Tarzan lived large, and wider than beasts from the constrained and neatly maintained forests of convention.
Bunny died a rich man in a moth-eaten cardigan, with a million dollars in an iron box in a freezer in the basement covered by fifteen year old meat.
It seems that my coin has fallen most often on the Bunny head side. But Tarzan always lurks below, on the flip side, waiting to swing down the stairs and cry out in a burning jungle madness.
