First the mast broke—
  driven 300 miles off course
Then the engine overheated
   and a makeshift mast blew away
in the dark

                2.

I can’t tell you anything
   about the course of the sun
or the depths of the moon
   the release of hidden springs
or the earth’s best illuminations

I can’t dispel the night
   or find your cold hands
Ask me to be silent
   I have lived through troubles and toil
Through sorrow I have aged too soon

No clothes, no robes, hide my changes—
  no girdle or wreath
A gentle breeze goes
  from orange, gold groves
marble figures gaze at me

A mule seeks passage through clouds
  The cliff rocks plunge beneath
and lemon blossoms glow
   He loves her for her color
as she fades into white leaves

Silver scissors like a beak
  that flies with the crows
My lover is a thief
  Her tears, whatever their bitterness,
were never so bitter as mine

                3.

Crystals of time—
  For all this suffering
you might as well be wise
  Some cats are friends,
some cats are killing machines

Much of what we see is random
  I’ve said it once
I won’t say it again
  We sat up half the night
swapping yarns

In the middle of a comedy—
  but you’re not very funny
The indifference of the universe
  to humans and other dumb animals—
ugly, unhappy, degenerate

He didn’t know or care
  if they listened
He knew no one much would listen
  She finds lots of lovers
but they don’t love her

No defense was needed...
  I’ll sleep on the train
The motion sways, lulls me
  This was her madness—
inappropriate pauses, unrelenting sadness

-February 12, 2012-

“Go ahead then—tell it
If you think it’s so funny
It’s your story; you started to tell it—
so tell it”

Thrilled by pomp and power,
uninterested in any inner life
Enraged, moralistic, harsh and desperate
her excess wasn’t about their happiness

Custom, privilege, injustice
that single-minded suffering, resistance, redemption
Highly educated, earnestly well-meaning,
her high self-regard, stuck in these sad, antiseptic American prisons

Relentless indoor winter heat
They’re like parasites—dangerous too, like predators
Blind to her own blindness,
moralistic, overconfident, dismissive

                2.

There are always things to criticize
but there was nothing that so frightened or embarrassed her
Her denials would never stop in any case
It might be better that way, he thinks,

but it will no longer be as good
Conclusions drawn, proclamations made
Every statement somewhat wrong, somewhat premature
she flees to the safety of darkness, shadier storms

Dismayed by his appearance he always avoids mirrors
It makes her uncomfortable to see herself in him
He sat there drinking beer after beer in front of the children
That was restraint—he would have preferred vodka or gin

Hatred alone couldn’t sustain him
After the explosion the company determined
the kid’s life was worth a cool 150,000
So they sent the family a check

                3.

They dance in the streets of Paris and Berlin
rush to enlist before the whole thing’s over
Three months later—300,000 dead, 600,000 wounded
1914 and the war had four more years to run

He loses a bit of himself each time he goes down there
His intuition could easily fail him again
She’s not dead—the rumors were wrong
She didn’t kill herself—she’s alive and lives

in a small, closed-in suburb just outside of Dallas
“I do have problems with my eyes and if I fall
I generally break something”
Powerful people often enjoy taking risks

The politics were sharp, self-serving, Machiavellian,
petty and sometimes very stupid
He’s 68 and walks on shattered knees—he remembers the glory,
the victory then and that she wasn’t there to share it

                4.

Views desperately imperfect,
his knowledge always partial
He flatters, kicks, and kisses
to get what he wants

Too talented to do what ordinary people do,
we bust up those we dislike no matter what they do or say
We glorify the people like us—
like clench-fisted members of some small, feral gang

Conflict, anxiety, boredom, fear
envelop them in this fog
If only she could forget some of it—
if only in mitigation

They always felt superior, she knows, but she can barely believe
it happened—she couldn’t know what those people might do
Not that it mattered all that much to finally fail—
her last story ended with nothing to gain and everything left was for sale

-January 28, 2012-

Always enthralled by the original, the profound, the difficult,
she cared alone for what was true and right
She ignored the analysis until the blood got deep
The cost has been incurred and now it’s too late

She couldn’t relive the pleasure of that mistake
This inner debate, this scar
The causes of her hidden, deep anguish
If she felt it now she must feel it again

There was nothing to be gained by talking about it
It was neither salient nor shameful; only pain
Her inner world obscured by parasites who sound
like the idle, terrified chatter of old men 

The smarter you are the more likely you’ll lie
The less conscious lies are the most effective
You don’t know what time will be the last time;
but there’s always a last time

                2.

Her confidence grounded in ignorance;
it was by no means certain that she’d win
Her lies do best when rare and
poorly as they become more frequent

But what about the deeper view?
That huge bore, that fraud:
the more she treasures her honest ways,
the more frequently she lies

Her father was always best at those fun occasions:
a splendid host, bright and jolly as a boy
It’s always sad, awfully sad, to look back upon those days
When it comes to making attachments, she refrains

A simple, grotesque game played at the highest level:
It’s not the few traces of life in the corpse that scares
her and fills her regrets; she’s most scarred and damaged
by the shrill, mordant traces she missed in his life before death

-January 7, 2012-

If it’s true, Chloris, that you love me
(and I understand that you love me well)
then the ecstasy of kings
couldn’t rival my happiness
and even the joys of heaven in death
would be unwelcome
Paradise couldn’t surpass the sweet ambrosia,
the fiery nectar of love in our veins
or how your favor for me reflects against eternity
and the love I see in your eyes

The Riffs

                 1.

She hated solitude and wouldn’t retreat
He wasn’t interested in his illness
and wouldn’t discuss it
Mom was always smiling at people
she didn’t want to smile at—she did it for you
He remained in his tent that morning
and sobbed like some broken hearted woman
All felt for him and pitied him
The loss of the orange trees still lingers here
Not one of us will ever come back

                2.

Happiness is insensitivity—
he relies on suggestions, rituals, lightly held beliefs
Nature is wider than her obtuse, anxious, speculations
His loneliness for her is self-imposed
It’s time to leave her now...
They didn’t live together, not right away
May the universe obliterate her lies, or save her
This failure’s so severe, so human
There were no revelations in this ardent, anxious, violence— not for us
She pretends to love but he just can’t see her

                3.

She followed the hearse to the church
but didn’t attend the funeral
out of deference to the family
We’re all bad detectives, bad at discovery
It wasn’t a moral failure
It was a failure of fellowship and good feeling
She looked so small standing alone in that doorway...
Admiration or aversion— you praise, desire, blame or despise
She was attracted to swindlers and was a deep seated grifter herself—
he looked at her then with such love in his eyes

-December 20, 2011-

In no time I found myself in a remote suburban place—
Lots of trees, flowers and green, and I knew the house I was walking past
belonged to Watson—so I walked down the lane to the door and let myself in
Soon a large number of people, men and women, arrived— mostly

middle-aged like me but duller and one of them
(a balding, slightly overweight, man— who later told me he
was Watson’s son) asked me what was I doing there
I told him I was a big fan of Watson’s and that I wanted to say hi

That was okay and, to much general laughter, he showed me a video of Watson
in Florida sunbathing and getting out of the water and told me Watson
was being treated for cancer and wasn’t at his Westchester home now
but that I was welcome to stay for lunch

Everyone began taking their seats in tables that were lined up
horizontally and vertically with an opening in the rectangular middle
with white table cloths and I carefully waited
until everyone else sat down and then cheerfully

seated myself in the one open seat left which was next to Watson’s son
He and I chatted a bit about Watson and his terrific radio show
Then he leaned over and confidentially said to me alone
“You know, many of Watson’s fans and friends come here

and they think I am far more generous than I am”
I assured him that I was not interested in
receiving anything, was not in need,
and always made a point of taking care of myself

When lunch was over I left the house,
quickly came home, and got out of bed determined
to look up “Listening with Watson” on the internet
It was an all night classical music show

from my youth that I now remember— there was no schedule, just music
and the deep resonant Watson voice— Watson a navy man who didn’t live
in Westchester and died in 1992 of a cancerous brain tumor
His surviving relatives all live in Texas

-December 17, 2011-

We don’t know where we are when
the taste, at last, of death is on our lips and tongue
Our good will and abstract empathies tell us nothing’s ever real
He loves intimately, passionately, without any stop but
in this boundless, burgeoning, heartless, insidious world,
naïve illusion is a luxury

                2.

Knotty abstractions numb his mind
He was taught “all that is, is right”
No pedestal’s broad enough to hold her
Now 56, the old seductive hustle’s
a really hard job for her and she hesitates...
She just can’t bring it off

                3.

His high-toned courtesies, his subtle diplomacies were
perfect models of political diplomatic correspondence
She’s an autumnal leaf – yellowish, dry, cracked
When people don’t do what she wants or expects she shuts them out but
given his peculiar talents and reclusive eccentricities
he really hasn’t done, for her, so badly

                4.

He doesn’t want to see you in that place with those people—
the small continuous, everyday insults eating at you
His grandma used to ask, “What makes you think that you, among all who live
in this stinking world, deserve to be happy?”
She acts like an angry, sullen, survivor but she wants you to know that all of her
violent acts were always provoked, justified, involuntary and, in any event, quite harmless

                5.

He didn’t see his fellow humans much in the balance of things
Sometimes even his friends and lovers were strangers
He shocked the parental parsonage— swore,
smoked his old stinking pipe everywhere, drank Cognac from a flask,
dismissed the locals as “clodhopping fools”
and loudly proclaimed his atheism

                6.

Here’s what’s said in a framed notice hanging on the prison wall:
“Limited physical contact such as
handshaking, embracing (hugs), and
kissing is permitted between an inmate and a visitor
within the bounds of good taste
at the beginning and the end of the visit”

-December 3, 2011-

It would be easy to assassinate me
I do the same things at the same times most days
Scrutinized with an assassin’s close scrutiny
I’d make an easy mark

When gone it will be as though you were never here
They take all your stuff, your work see,
they put it in a box and label it by you
and send it on its way to their storage facility in Ohio

What price brilliance?
She inflames her enemies,
alienates her friends,
disgusts, baffles, and offends

We happily fall, slide, love, ride—
our lives intermittently careen
But after the break-up the whole thing seems
like a series of small-minded transactions to me

                2.

We don’t support him for what he is but for what he isn’t
He’s neither an assassin nor a thief
He rides the fine ride through streets
of purgatory, silence, sorrow and oblivion

“The roads were covered with icy snow
The men suffered greatly for
many of us were without shoes and the broken ice
lacerated our feet”

Harmless now and imprisoned the old Mohegan writes:
“Still covered with the blood of my enemies
still hot with the joys of battle, victory and vengeance
Surrounded by my brothers

I am the greatest war chief ever
But even then I can’t bring back the dear ones
I can’t recall them back from the dead
Smile on me, I’m happy and joyous in revenge”

                3.

They get older but hardly change except for their thin facades
They’re like adolescents who have withered
Her god is portrayed in that holy book as narcissistic,
misogynistic, genocidal and most certainly insane

Her audience knew they couldn’t trust their eyes
but they didn’t mind
If you like, that girl will dance just for you
If you pay her to

The small gnawing hurts of everyday
make her cringe and sear inside
He stands by her when she’s crazy
She stands by him when he’s drunk

You don’t want to fight this guy
If you hit him he likes it
If you knock him down
it just makes him mad

                4.

“To advance would be madness
To stand still the height of folly”
The sickness lasted six months and then
disappeared all by itself

It’s heart is coal black as it spins slowly through space
He self-medicated his frustrations with drink and cigars
Paced, chain smoked, retreated into stoic silence,
erratic ups and downs

“There’s the drugs that jazz me up
and the drugs that drown me down”
No progeny—this misbegotten line ends now
“When do you feel like you can play this thing?”

“Never” “Never?”
“Well, some days it feels pretty good”
Unforced glimmers of grace and well-being
come to him unbidden at the strangest of times

-November 20, 2011-

The pattern’s broken
What’s loved is gone, taken
Her faith failed to prevent her caustic breakdowns
or her eventual car exhaust suicide

Malignant fates—
sailors above deck heard the bubbling cries
of the unfortunates drowned in the seas below, no fear—
we’re all just visitors here

What if the vessel can no longer hold
and the sides leak, collapse and crumble?
Unlikable people behaving implausibly, so
he pays and pays and pays

She can’t get past the disgrace,
the human demotion, the disrespect,
this unsavory person, all of her personal contaminations,
and sickly, damned aversions

                2.

Her body possessed no magic
but enthralled him nevertheless
She breaks the pattern of his
unremitting sadness

He likes the fantasy she pretends to possess
But any day now, just to defy him, she may
twist it, worry it, stomp it, and
thoughtlessly toss it all away

Don’t worry about it
Life’s a kind of jazz, an
improvisation, so to speak, no need to worry—
you either dig it, or you don’t

No critic, he’d stare at a painting for an hour
sometimes with full appreciation, but
found he couldn’t say anything about it
except “wonderful, wonderful”

                3.

The dream is in browns, yellows or grays
peopled by those who say dreadfully little
Alone in a well-lit elevator that never stops and ascends
she hears their voices from across closed doors

645 years of the duchy produced no genius,
only two rulers of any ability, countless dullards and
not a few imbeciles and lunatics
She wears her pain like an old frayed coat

Now he no longer fights to win
He fights to make his victorious enemies pay
Anger makes him want to hurt them
Hate makes him want to see them dead

She was wrong about a lot of things
But she was right about you, bitch
He was just one of many antagonists
whose ambitions matched or exceeded his own

                4.

War is glamorous, heroic, holy, thrilling,
manly and cleansing
War is immoral, repulsive, uncivilized,
futile, wasteful and cruel

A potential competitive advantage can’t
motivate everything and won’t necessarily win
There are plenty of bodies to maim and
strategies are the same everywhere

Our victories are ash in our mouths
Buffeted by deadly events, atrocious blind customs,
humiliated with sorrows and incorrigible violence
they believe the absurdities told to them are real

That emotional son of a bitch, our leader
“I long for the day when we shall attack them with
an overwhelming force and annihilate them
May I live long enough to see them all hacked to pieces”

-November 5, 2011-

Forged narratives, collages, corruptions
The sex was great, our fiercely stoned pleasures,
elusive, exciting, excessive—
but it wasn’t enough—we couldn’t last
My false friend, my hypocrite, my liar
Sad ex-wife, sad mother, sad lover

Don’t be naïve,
the past wasn’t innocent,
the present’s not pristine
They only spoke the language of their murderers—
they knew no other,
the German of their fathers and brothers

She can be steely—
if she has to be
Scant solace there
To make these dark perversions
and hold these dark thoughts around secrecy,
detachment, melancholia

He wore a good quality overcoat,
a dark hat and carried that familiar old walking stick
with the ivory handle
He looked, for him, almost elegant on the day his father,
that violent, thick-headed bastard, died of a heart attack
while drinking his usual glass of morning wine

                2.

He advertised his unoriginal ideas in an original way
Operational details were for others— propaganda was his alone
Carelessness and indifference in everyday affairs
Muddleheaded, confused, he often didn’t think clearly
Still, everyone had to hear his fiercely held views
He received no mail or parcels, even for Christmas

What is disturbing those birds?
Garbage in the reeds—deflated birthday balloons mostly—
Home to wild boars and nauseous eagles,
radioactive, scarred bears and
atomic pine trees that grow like bushes
I don’t remember who I was then, where to go, or who I was with

33 years old, thickset, round chunky face,
low forehead, small eyes, fleshy lips
His mouth was always open, thick red neck
When he left, he left no forwarding address and neglected to pay the rent
“People say they like mavericks, but they don’t”
That’s what he said

Harsh vigor, stern melancholy
seriousness without intelligence
Passionate, abrasive, smart but inconsistent—
she can’t achieve reflective depth or delicacy of judgment
She’d use pretend emotions to bring to life
that happy fervor, that suppressed gaiety of her nature

                3.

This time together is precious
Before his music stops he desperately holds onto every penny,
determined not to be buried alone in the rain like Mozart,
in some unmarked pauper’s grave
Only brutes directly enjoy the violence of revenge—
the violence his music expressed

The construction worker stopped working—laid off
Couldn’t pay me back, wouldn’t say so and insisted,
as a matter of pride, that I deposit his check
which unsurprisingly bounced the next day
His daughter would have been embarrassed if he couldn’t pay
I have a daughter so I happily lent him the money

It isn’t that she has more on her conscience
than I know or believe—
It’s that she has more on her conscience
than I care to acknowledge or discuss
When love dies another world soul closes its eyes
Just one more thing to regret and mourn

“At home, our parents spoke Russian to each other
We spoke Yiddish to them and English among ourselves”
He wasn’t an overly intelligent thug, he was just a thug who made his fortune
through shady deals in Turkey and an opportune marriage to a rich heiress
What matters: secrecy, detachment, struggle, survival, victory—
This comes naturally to him and permeates his being

-October 18, 2011-

Brain flares, shrill voices
   scraps of melody, scorches of memory
   torturous, crowded, pitiless voices, screeches
   in his head, all at once, hot, infected, shrill, soft or loud –
He throws himself in the cold river— they pull him out
   He’s no longer, he can never again be, that man

Her advice—“I wanted to mention
   a few more things for Elise—

Do not let her take too many things
   If she needs two chemises a week, let her bring six
   If she is used to wearing only one, about four will do
   Stockings—six pairs, she only needs two changes of dress
Keep the nice blue one at home it will be ruined
   in the packing, if she has a black petticoat

this will be best for traveling, and then
   she will want just one white underskirt

Too much luggage is inconvenient on a journey”
   Mechanical, blind, we go on
   Still, with her usual decency, uprightness, charm, she adds
   “You know how heavy my heart is
I don’t want to talk of it
   My heart bleeds at once”

                2.

People give, when they give, their own gifts
   The aristocrat admired his brilliance
   But his sarcasm and bad manners “are a disgrace”
   He later said “I leave the world to go the way it pleases
I’m difficult and for that, I have often
   suffered the consequences”

Wild justice, revenge
   When you want it, you really want it

The deepest wounds never heal
   Skin just covers over them in waves
   His comic touch only added a grotesque element
   to the pathos, pain and haze of that sad day
Either learn to develop calluses
   or keep yourself safe at home

We spoke frankly as far as such a thing
   is possible with him

Though they reconciled at their father’s death
   relations between the brothers
   remained entirely superficial
   She wrote “Everyone there assumed I was a normal person
The girls giggling with excitement, the boys proud and manly
   That was rather weird”

                3.

The death count’s wrong, they didn’t live
   Tens of thousands were discharged to die
   Tens of thousands died within the first few months
   Tens of thousands lingered for the first or second year
You understand people too little
   and you trust them too much

She fell in love with fire
   Sick of your ridiculous dreams

Your stupid plans, your empty promises
   Never pretty enough, never really thin
   He painted her portrait, caught the bloom she had
   before the loss of innocence
I know how it feels when you’re in trouble
   and no one’s there

No more edges, you might drown—
   There’s nothing left to cling to

Old men nursing morning beers
   This is where the slaughterhouse was
   The transvestites hung out here, near the sex club
   When she gave up meat she still loved the smell
of the slaughterhouse, the animal blood, its visceral
   wildly cold justice

                4.

“Well I think it looks smart,” she said,
   “That’s the difference between you and me
   Your hair is too long and greasy
   My hair is all done up special
I think it looks smart”
   I thought her sweeter than red lollipops

When she couldn’t move and was waiting to die
   She’d stare at silver balloons outside her window

The wind moves the branches above me
   It bends the leaves
   The sun in the river vibrates in gleams
   of  white light on gray water
As he tells it he always fought harder,
   flew faster, and gambled smarter than anyone else

The balloons were set up outside for her delight
   This house has no woman now

Every lie sickens him more and the longer
   he lives the more they lie to him
   Go out there where no one can help you
   Accept who you are and live
Some things, when you have to ask for them,
   aren’t worth having

-September 27, 2011-