58

you dragass around: you know you’re
on empty: the light has gone out on

your vowels, blue-lit with hallucination:
the slick has dried on your rhythms:

the pulp of your poetry has drained
juice-clear, prose having

decided what’s to become of everything:
it’s like, well, if, like, you pull

the wings off a gnat, you have a nit
or nittwit: but, of course, keeping

on is the only thing to keep: stop,
you sink through: imagine you can

knock up a knockout, or knock a
knockout up: redress and re-dress

the backdrop: though it’s neutral,
breezes fan, snakes strike: but it’s

neutral: project upon it filmed
rights: play or play with your

piano: I have the dominant gene that
curls my tongue: the

trouble is that it then looks
like a sow cunt: I look in the

mirror and think had I a boar’s
needledick I’d do it to myself in the

slitified tongue: this enables me
to project recessiveness and “get”

the echo of mixed emotions: (the
major macroeconomic is that more

people sweat a raise than raise a
sweat): easy reversals lead

to wisdom: the great practitioners
on Wall Street take a different

tack, a take tack, no, I mean: for
example, you run to the computer

every day and buy and sell and lose
your money, whereas someone takes

the long view, does nothing, and
gets rich: also lives long because

his belly is not entangled, just full:
takes all kinds: you be the kind

not already taken: be doing something
excusable, like for mankind or the

arts, and under that shield get rich,
be greedy, don’t look greedy: this

is really good advice, coming from a
skeptic. who taketh up poetry picketh

up an unemployment form:
poetry’s the wealth poverty

buys: some of the wealthy have bought
poetry but were poor in spirit or

their parents sucked and they learned
to: the great thing about brooks is

that water moves like jaguars and
gazelles but is dead: the dead unless

ruffled by worms don’t move and dead
impounded water except for a nibbling

fish or two doesn’t move: but water
which is like stone, dead, dances and

sprays, flashes and dives like life:
and what is so good is it is immortal,

immortally dead forever so it can
keep on forever going away and coming

back, a great action at no expense
to life, the sun an engine long-dwelt

in the heavens: but not a dweller:
just the spirit of motion animates

water: it glistens: we are ourselves
pools in a long brook: husked, we

glisten, too, glisten and glisten