Right Now

It doesn’t matter
that it’s cold,
windy, grey,
that the trees
are a solemn witness
to my loneliness.

It doesn’t matter
that this moment
doesn’t belong to me,
that my being
is as heavy
and light
as this footprint
in concrete,
and no less
anonymous.

It doesn’t matter
that I avoid the cracks,
that wherever I step
there is some pain,
that right now
I am guiltless.

because it is a passion to know

Theme and Variations
by David Ignatow

How do you get to scream the world is good
and we have only to lose ourselves in its goodness?
Ask me in return and together we'll question
every man, woman and child we meet,
and won't it be the Lord's Prayer
if we all get up on our legs and shout
out the question rhythmically
because it is a passion
to know.

* * *

You sit drinking milk
knowing your faults,
milk drinking
your last gesture
to childhood.

* * *

Look at my smooth face
cover my failings.
I smile, I add
to the picture of health.

* * *

You strike me
and I'll strike you
and when we are through
beating each other
nearly dead, about to die,
we will be close
to an understanding of ourselves
as wanting to die
in the quickest, most efficient way
without sacrificing pleasure
or the principle of life.

* * *

There's love in me like an egg hardened.
What do you think would have emerged
if it had been kept warm
and allowed to hatch?

* * *

I am an affectionate man,
I love the differences
that compose me.

new poet to me

LETTER FROM KICKAPOO (pop. 250)
by William Wantling

I’m
hiding out
from the heat here

this time
they want me
for Living without Believing
for Working without Slavery
Playing without Misery

please don’t give me away?

kind of phoney

POETRY
by William Wantling

I’ve got to be honest. I can
make good word music and rhyme

at the right times and fit words
together to give people pleasure

and even sometimes take their
breath away – but it always

somehow turns out kind of phoney.
Consonance and assonance and inner

rhyme won’t make up for the fact
that I can’t figure out how to get

down on real paper the real or the true
which we call life. Like the other

day. The other day I was walking
on the lower exercise yard here

at San Quentin and this cat called
Turk came up to a friend of mine

and said Ernie, I hear you’re
shooting on my kid. And Ernie

told him So what, punk? And Turk
pulled out his stuff and shanked

Ernie in the gut only Ernie had a
Metal tray in his shirt. Turk’s

shank bounced right off him and
Ernie pulled his stuff out and of

course Turk didn’t have a tray and
caught it dead in the chest, a bad

one, and the blood that came to his
lips was a bright pink, lung blood,

and he just laid down in the grass
and said Shit. Fuck it. Sheeit.

Fuck it. And he laughed a long
time, softly, until he died. Now

what could consonance or assonance or
even rhyme do to something like that?

Poetry Belongs to Me

Poetry belongs to me.
Me, me, me.
It can't be taken away
no matter what you say.

No matter how I feel
the word is real.
The day isn't done
until a poem's begun.

Until clouds stay still
time can have its will.
Until the word comes
I haven't any tomes.

Until the end of living
I've promised giving.
No death is greater;
no life could be sweeter.

I'm Hearing Voices

The mountain
says go on,
no matter the time,

no matter the work.
The bird says
it's different

from here,
and from here.
The rat says

I eat and sleep
and love a coconut
tree whose fronds

grow just the right
distance apart
for jumping

and excaping.
The cloud says
the sky is vast

but I live contented
wherever the wind
may go.

Charmed Life

To live on an island
in the middle of the Pacific,
drive a car shore to shore,

east to west,
along the only road,
smell ocean everywhere.

To see a mountain
in the distance
you can only reach

by boat or plane.
Never wear a shirt
or shoes or socks

for days. Thousands
of miles by air or water
to any continent.

A foreigner in the USA
and a castaway
in paradise.

The Beginning

The appearing stars,
the clover, the hooved trail
through the meadow, cows

grazing, watching us pass,
munching their evening meal,
our talk sweet and true

though we won't remember
how significant the day was
or what we talked of, the sun,

like a good friend not ready
to go home, lingers at the door
unwilling to say goodbye.

Teachings of the Blessed Beauty

O peoples of the world! The Sun of Truth hath risen to illumine the whole earth, and to spiritualize the community of man. Laudable are the results and the fruits thereof, abundant the holy evidences deriving from this grace. This is mercy unalloyed and purest bounty; it is light for the world and all its peoples; it is harmony and fellowship, and love and solidarity; indeed it is compassion and unity, and the end of foreignness; it is the being at one, in complete dignity and freedom, with all on earth.

The Blessed Beauty saith: ‘Ye are all the fruits of one tree, the leaves of one branch.’ Thus hath He likened this world of being to a single tree, and all its peoples to the leaves thereof, and the blossoms and fruits. It is needful for the bough to blossom, and leaf and fruit to flourish, and upon the interconnection of all parts of the world-tree, dependeth the flourishing of leaf and blossom, and the sweetness of the fruit.

For this reason must all human beings powerfully sustain one another and seek for everlasting life; and for this reason must the lovers of God in this contingent world become the mercies and the blessings sent forth by that clement King of the seen and unseen realms. Let them purify their sight and behold all humankind as leaves and blossoms and fruits of the tree of being. Let them at all times concern themselves with doing a kindly thing for one of their fellows, offering to someone love, consideration, thoughtful help. Let them see no one as their enemy, or as wishing them ill, but think of all humankind as their friends; regarding the alien as an intimate, the stranger as a companion, staying free of prejudice, drawing no lines.

In this day, the one favoured at the Threshold of the Lord is he who handeth round the cup of faithfulness; who bestoweth, even upon his enemies, the jewel of bounty, and lendeth, even to his fallen oppressor, a helping hand; it is he who will, even to the fiercest of his foes, be a loving friend. These are the Teachings of the Blessed Beauty, these the counsels of the Most Great Name.

Manuscripts of Bukowski

A still and quiet angel of knowledge and of comprehension

Image of the Engine

BY GEORGE OPPEN

1

Likely as not a ruined head gasket
Spitting at every power stroke, if not a crank shaft
Bearing knocking at the roots of the thing like a pile-driver:
A machine involved with itself, a concentrated
Hot lump of a machine
Geared in the loose mechanics of the world with the valves jumping
And the heavy frenzy of the pistons. When the thing stops,
Is stopped, with the last slow cough
In the manifold, the flywheel blundering
Against compression, stopping, finally
Stopped, compression leaking
From the idle cylinders will one imagine
Then because he can imagine
That squeezed from the cooling steel
There hovers in that moment, wraith-like and like a plume of steam, an aftermath,
A still and quiet angel of knowledge and of comprehension.


2

Endlessly, endlessly,
The definition of mortality

The image of the engine

That stops.
We cannot live on that.
I know that no one would live out
Thirty years, fifty years if the world were ending
With his life.
The machine stares out,
Stares out
With all its eyes

Thru the glass
With the ripple in it, past the sill
Which is dusty—If there is someone
In the garden!
Outside, and so beautiful.


3

What ends
Is that.
Even companionship
Ending.

‘I want to ask if you remember
When we were happy! As tho all travels

Ended untold, all embarkations
Foundered.


4

On that water
Grey with morning
The gull will fold its wings
And sit. And with its two eyes
There as much as anything
Can watch a ship and all its hallways
And all companions sink.


5

Also he has set the world
In their hearts. From lumps, chunks,

We are locked out: like children, seeking love
At last among each other. With their first full strength
The young go search for it,

But even the beautiful bony children
Who arise in the morning have left behind
Them worn and squalid toys in the trash

Which is a grimy death of love. The lost
Glitter of the stores!
The streets of stores!
Crossed by the streets of stores
And every crevice of the city leaking
Rubble: concrete, conduit, pipe, a crumbling
Rubble of our roots

But they will find
In flood, storm, ultimate mishap:
Earth, water, the tremendous
Surface, the heart thundering
Absolute desire.

buk

the secret

don't worry, nobody has the
beautiful lady, not really, and
nobody has the strange and
hidden power, nobody is
exceptional or wonderful or
magic, they only seem to be
it's all a trick, an in, a con,
don't buy it, don't believe it.
the world is packed with
billions of people whose lives
and deaths are useless and
when one of these jumps up
and the light of history shines
upon them, forget it, it's not
what it seems, it's just
another act to fool the fools
again.

there are no strong men, there
are no beautiful women.
at least, you can die knowing
this
and you will have
the only possible
victory.

--Charles Bukowski

After the Star Knowledge Conference in Sedona

Yellow Feather
leads us into the mountains,
a trail into the sun,

single file, two hour hike:
Indians, psychics,
a palsied soothsayer

and his Quija
reading mother,
returnees from alien

ships, saucer-
eyed others waiting
to ascend,

and land-lover me.
Shaman's Dome and Cave,
Red Rock National Forest,

a round window carved in rock.
Portal to what?
Amphitheater of the ancestors?

I sit on the lip of the hole
daring it to transport me
into another world.

October

I searched for it all day.
Our pockets are supposed to be full.
One crumpled dollar and a key,

shiny like the moon,
doesn't open anything.
I hold on to it just in case.

I've thrown a branch
on the fire, burning leaves
like falling stars,

smoke turning in the dark.
The cold bedded in the hollows.
I shiver with lonesome fever.

Buying Time

Henry awakened with the fear. No bad dreams. Didn’t remember having any dreams in months. His eyes opened, and he was wide awake. The fear was there. He knew it wouldn’t go away easily.

It wasn’t the kind of fear you could ignore or bravely push aside, marching on to duty. He’d dealt with fear of all sorts. He knew it inside and out. This was the kind of fear that could hold a man down for days. There was the possibility he might never get up.

So he rolled over, covered his head with the blanket, and waited. For what, he wasn’t sure. Maybe the phone would ring. He’d receive word that some relative had died, although he probably wouldn’t answer the phone anyway. Maybe the worst storm in a century would bury his house in four feet of snow. Maybe this was the day the world would end. The millennium was near wasn’t it? Anything was better than this fear. Better that it was all over, quickly, than this eternal waiting.

He’d done a lot of waiting. Sure, he’d beat himself up with guilt about all that wasted time. But, somehow, the wasted time seemed important--at least as important as anything else he’d done so far in his life.

Fear weighed practically nothing, but what it lacked in weight it made up for in cunning. Henry was a sucker every time. Shoulders to the mat and down for the count, then suddenly, he'd pull a desperation move out of the deep recesses of his reptilian brain--that stupid lizard part of him that just instinctively wanted to survive, no matter what. He was alive, if you called walking that razor edge of fear living.

And, in some demented way, he enjoyed that walk or, more correctly, that run with fear. When he survived, he felt a little stupid, but there was a sense of victory, and a clarity of vision that sometimes lasted for weeks or months--if he was lucky.

The real trouble started when others got in his way. He could handle fear on his own--he thought. He didn’t need others sticking their noses into his controlled madness. They, inevitably, threw his timing off--interfering with the weird workings that depended upon a delicate balance between sanity and insanity. They had set him straight, in their minds, when, in reality, they had left him an empty shell, trudging through life again, with no victory and no clarity.

The funny thing was that fear had told him that he needed others. So he made sure he had others, especially female others. Besides, nothing, to Henry’s mind, kept fear at bay better than sex. The problem was the sex had lost its power, at least its staying power. He wasn’t able to hold on to that old mind set that had carried him through so many times before. The old dog needed some new tricks.


After wrestling to a draw with his nemesis, Henry finally crawled out of bed about seven that morning--just in time to prepare a good appearance for the most recent other in his life. It was bad enough that he was going to have to explain why he wasn’t at work besides coming up with a good alibi for his boss before the other arrived home after the night shift in the ER.

Henry dialed the hospital, hoping something would come to him, relying on that reptilian tenacity to pull him through, and the thrill and danger of the spontaneity of the moment and the unexpected to inspire him. “Yeah, could you connect me with Housekeeping? This is Henry Abbott. My hemorrhoids are really acting up. I’m not going to be in today.” Would anyone doubt a guy who had the audacity to mention his hemorrhoids? He was sure that the supervisor wouldn’t be able to resist divulging Henry’s latest excuse. He could see the other workers laughing and shaking their heads in dismay. He derived a certain sense of worth from playing the fool.

At the same time, Henry knew fear thrived on such foolishness. He felt the heavy weight of guilt the second the lie left his mouth. What else could he do he reasoned. He’d actually contemplated calling one time and telling them straight out that he had the fear and wouldn’t be in. It didn’t take long for Henry to trash that idea. He figured those people didn’t understand fear, that kind of fear, any more than they understood someone who had it. No sick leave for fear.

To Henry’s thinking, most people in this world had no real doubts. If they did, they covered them up with materialism, religion, and mass identity. They didn’t have imaginations. If they did, how could they have avoided having doubts? How could they not get up every day and be filled with fear? Just having a body and a mind that could separate itself from that body, look at it in wonder and horror, how could that not be enough to keep them under their covers, lying to their bosses, wishing for death, but too scared to let go?

There was a little relief, now that the call had been made, but he knew it wouldn’t last. There was always some shit about to happen. It was just like recess in elementary school: the bully was always waiting on the playground. Henry had been playing sick for a long time. He’d go to the nurse’s office, not the playground. His parents would pick him up wondering why their kid was sick so much.


Well, the bully just walked in the door, home from work. That was the dilemma. The others assuaged the fear, for a time, in those fleeting moments of complete release from the body by way of the body. But they brought more fear with them. They expected something from him and hadn’t learned what he knew: you could expect nothing except more shit and fear.

Henry knew his role. He should have been an actor. But this wasn’t acting, this was survival and that meant more waiting. He had to play for time. Time might just be the healer. But he was beginning to lose hope in even that.

Lisa was ten years younger than Henry. She was attracted to that restless philosopher in him. She also had hopes for another Henry she saw, in rare moments, that she’d really stuck around to see. But she was losing hope, too. And Henry wasn’t surprised. It was inevitable. Hope was for pussies. Hope was a disease that kept coming back. It’d go into remission and then everything would be clear. No more struggle. No more dilemmas. Life was just an enervation as Rimbaud had said. Continual getting and loss, and never really getting anything or losing anything. So what could hope offer? Death? The end of suffering, of getting and losing? Henry was ready for it. He had been preparing all his life for it. So he was ready when Lisa walked in the door.

He had a sixth sense for tragedy like he’d written the script for all the tragedies that had ever occurred. He kept looking for the meaning, the lesson to be learned in all the horror of life. And with so much tragedy one needed an extra helping of pleasure. The others only understood this for limited periods of time. It never occurred to Henry that all the others, the ones that had left, had found the lesson to be learned, and that he was instrumental to their self-discovery. You might say he was the catalyst, or the devil. He preferred to think of himself as the coyote of Indian lore, the trickster.

He was a shape-shifter, for sure. That was part of the game. It bought time, and time was the prize. If he could hold onto time like it was an heirloom from a long dead ancestor, then maybe the answer would come, the restlessness lie down at the foot of his bed like a tired old dog dreaming of a good bone to gnaw on.

Lisa had a bone to gnaw on. When she walked in the house without saying a word, threw her coat on the couch, and went straight to the bedroom, slamming drawers back there, Henry braced himself for the coming storm. He knew he'd have to grovel and howl like coyote if he wanted to survive. Wasn't that the purpose, to survive, to fight again another day? The spoils of life had to be won, but time was running out.

"Henry, why are you home? Never mind, don't answer, I don't want to hear your excuses. I don't know why I thought this could work."

"Listen, Lisa, hey, I'm home. Let's take advantage of it. You know I ain't going to change. We can spend the day together. Have a coupla beers, get naked. I'll rock your world before you sleep. We'll fall sleep with me inside you."

"Shit, Henry, it doesn't work anymore. I mean it was exciting for a while. But when you fuck me it's like I'm not there. It's like you're trying to get somewhere and you're trying to get there through me, without me..."

Henry looked everywhere but at Lisa. Snow was falling, the window fogged by condensation. He shivered just thinking about the cold. The car probably wouldn't have started. He couldn't have gone to work anyway. Maybe it'll just keep snowing. They'll close school, close the hospital. He used to love snow days. He and Lisa will be snowbound, waiting for the snow to melt, hold up for winter, waiting for spring. Who knows what will happen then?