He said I prefer not to

He said, I prefer not to

homage to Bartleby the Scrivener

A. INKA

Standing on the Edge of Time

Standing on

the edge of time

feel my soul

just

slipping away.

Standing

on

the edge of life

feel my soul

just

slipping away.

Dancing

on

the edge of a rhyme

If time could fly,

love to heal &

words to mend

I would be a shadow

marching amongst

the may mad fields.

Would you dance?

Would you dance

in the light of a

May bright moon

where love,

redemption

and

fire

dance,

a tango

with

sultry

evanescent

steps

of

desire?

Standing on

the edge of time

feel my soul

just

slipping away.

Less attached to the daily current of life. Leaping inside a thought, a word that changes shape by the moment, a hint of color that slips inside an emotion, and then vanishes in a turn. A word that dances in a provocative minuet, the shape of a note that twists and turns inside, a shallow well that we draw inspiration from, and when I drop the bucket, splashing down deep over fifty meters or more I hit the cold springs of memory.

Revelation held in a puddle of water, my hands part the image, and the drops fall one by one. Each year of my life held in a thimble then tossed to the sky that seems to laugh at my presumptions of knowing.

How could you leave? She asked. And the madness? What of the madness? How is desire revealed?

X. di N ka

Ichabod said, I’m a mystic made of dark Belgian chocolate who melts desires on your tongue.

Ibidy bibbid di bop! said the moon to the sky.

Ink a dinka – dink a do! said Mrs. Kalibash to the burlesque dancer Lars on loan from the Swedish ballet, but glad to offer a lap dance in exchange for a morsel of love.

Staying is returning close to memory and memories are shadows that drown all of our recollections. I’ve seen the shadows dancing figures trace their death defying images on the walls. A corridor that leads to a long passageway turns to the left: It was a left even though it turned round and came back to the beginning

IV. Do you remember – how words fell off the blackboard?

First, it was a simple matter of a single letter that seemed to slip off the blackboard – Was it a T?

A, “T”?

Yes, that’s my name. And so your name fell away!

Exactly!

Then what did you do?

I found a mate, an accompanying and accommodating note – not a long note – but a B flat found at the bottom of a horn, that sounded like the wailing cry of a loon, the echoing song of an epiphany by the name of, Iphigenia the half sister of Eros who was a tranny queen who worked by the Williamsburg Bridge.

Ωإ۔

If love could cure and angels would be redeemed. Where the shadows appear and disappear, where the night falters, and love finds its way home. Shall I find you among the shadows?

Then you left? How could you leave when the memory of time was so compelling?

No, it’s the memory of a lie, you idiot!

The memory of a lie echoed like a round resonate note in the culvert pipe by Santa Monica Boulevard. We played bee bop there when the river was dry and the rolling notes of a saxophone would orgiastically exhale. The full burning embers of the hookah pipe glowed in a simmering burn, an E minor sizzled on the grilled.

Sunny-side up! called out the bandleader. Soon enough! said the drummer as he gave tingling snip snap brush of the snare.

The culvert, yes that one, the drain storm, as big as a worm hole by the planet Andar. That one that we slip easily between the realms of here and there. The journey is not so difficult, it begins, generally with the e minor bee bop rift, in a II, VI, IX progression that Charlie Parker wrote on the back of a napkin. Then he nodded off and never finished the ballad.

Do you remember the night of dreams?

Ż

Turning back she faced the oval mirror by the pasture and looked at the winter scene as snow devoured the land. Night’s shadows returned. At midnight the moon was so luminescent the snow was burning white as our ski tracks disappeared in the wake.

The drunken sailor from Leeds said, “An Irish funeral?”

“Christ sakes… this is a literary adventure, turns, twists of the plot, little graveyards if you will, but wakes …. damn, lad, why such a literalist you could be mistaken for an English teacher!

If love could lead, if a song could heal, if our words could leap beyond shadows, would we find ourselves at the end of the day in a room much like our imagination? Would the night falter or would it open gloriously wide like virgin lovers.

“Leeds United!” screamed the lad as he poured out of the door and tucked into the waiting arms of a drag queen who was only too happy for a sea food snack. Barracudas circle closer and closer… less real, more vivacious, and alluring.

Less attached to reality, less attached to the nuance of day to day, less, less, less. Unable to navigate between the faces and desires, the lurid expectations, the small etchings of shadows, a stark jagged line that appears and disappears, the late breeze of summer blows across fields of lilacs and daisies, luscious yellow sun saturated blossoms, and the porch window was left ajar – enough for a bee to saunter into the room – searching between the magnetic points, the reference point of alpha to omega and all the train stops between, in the fields of poppies – lascivious reds overflowing with memory- the hummingbird feeder filled with the succulent ruby juice of fire

Here’s this journey which is obscure but filled with clues like bread crumbs along the trail, nothing is obscure in this journey backwards to home, always to home, the revelation of self.

Spinning

in the enchanting

choir of love’s

enchanted fire.

Hold me close

while time

fades away

Standing on

the edge of time

Inside/Out: Mu Jazz

Inside/ Out

never make much of the journey I step in and then I step out Why bother where the line ends or begins Monday morning the moon is voluptuous lilac ascending to lavender dissolves into a minor fugue – e minor raised to a fifth – a moody bourbon soaked shade of reverie – the dredges at the bottom of the glass stares longingly at the rheumy eyes and wonders of all the dreams and loves those eyes beheld

Andar was the last stop on the tour- sorry did I leave too soon The point of departure expands Photons are the passports for possibilities Beam me home with love said I to customs Customarily immigration is glad to see me She slithers a hand forward a reptilian slither of flesh extrudes from a smile that smokes like a crevice from a volcanoes steam vent Silly silly silly eartharian It is a steam vent – we are fire and longing Follow the reverie the enchanted wisp as the flautist from Benarres seduces the cobra

Welcome to Andar

Anything to declare

Only my desires – longings – lust 2-glad to be the ambassador for love

For love she queried In that case, welcome home She closed the counter for the day all the other citizens from near and far we’re given a hookah – smoked the finest blend of Stellatian & Vermont flowers Red Queen to Knight 4 she said while sprawled on a mufraj couch and made love right there in arrivals lounges

The ecstasy of an orange poppy waking to find itself bedded next to a deep purple iris jealousy enchanted with a white virginal daisy and a succulently yellow core waiting to be devoured Desire Alpha & Omega

I am the Ambassador of Love 2 she said But on our home planet Love is hello and the intimate embrace of lovers resonate vivaciously She turned to me as I parted with immigration and as our eyes locked never faltering in gaze we stepped out of the mere guise of formality and for a quotient of time allotted lovers we stepped inside each unfulfilled desire Full ripe pearlescent moon illuminated the shadows of our caresses

How simple is desire

More than a star can dream – peer through the keyhole a kaleidoscope that turns shatters and dissolves Alpha & Omega

Casually Madam Curie rolled the dice Bones ossified

Do that Shakespearian rag said poor Tom.

Inside out forward back open of course always a right action and the contrary Elegant billiards is the universe said Heisenberg

one opens the other closes Love is fire and longing and in the incineration of desire do we find our way home Carry us Carry us home it was the C minor 7th that got me While we open our hands to heaven wonder of the universe that fills the chasm of our iris and invites us to peer just around the corner

Peeka boo! said the goddess Athena in drag as a Greek diner.

Bippy di bippy di bop said the satyr to the voyeur Can you peer into a question and find the love longingly ascribed to you or are you always peering into the key hole What lewd indiscretions are you finding While on Andar each room is separated by the desire for privacy with words offering an invitation Then as my ship of photon light appears on the horizon there is an ecstatic shout from the focsal – Andar on the starboard port Light years slip away as graciously as her slip fell to the floor in puddle of magenta as we lusciously embraced in the dimming twilight and the night slipped further into reveries Our tongues traversed each desire

Curious, curious, what you find on the other side of the door.

A concerto of all things a baroque variation of Tutti Frutti

Li Pon Calling Andar: Half a Li Half a League Onward

Li Pon Calling Andar: Half a Li Half a League Onward

Lars is an ambassador and Smith is from the enemy kingdom disguised as an ambassador to Andar.

When I die I will give all my money to a dog by the name of Fred who goes by the name of Joe. Joe will ask that the money be laid out on the floor, cook a few juicy steaks, after all Namaya made such a big deal about being a vegetarian and was such a pain in the ass about it, it is important to make sure he is part of the feast. Well to make the scenario complete let us sprinkle some of his ashes on the feast. Yes, Namaya, was always into the theater thing, so we had a huge bonfire, a Hindu thing, then we burn the fucker, it will have a lot of invitations, but no one will come… a few curious on lookers, but no family, they will say he was “mad” and therefore, “We are not mad and to ensure we aren’t mad, we will cast him to the fires of our memory. We will be vanquished, our love for ourselves will be redeemed, our sanity will be restored, and we will launch him on the funeral pyre.

“Good riddance to you – you --- you Crazy fuk!”

“The word is fuck. Ignorant mother fucker!”

“We know, but we are in such polite company, that to say fuck would put us in a state of disrepute. We are trying to distance ourselves from the po8.”

“There you go fucking with the language again, it’s po ET. Like the Emperor Po who just Et? Dig. Dig. Dag. Dug. Snug as a bug, your mama danced the hoola hoop on the rug. Did the shimmy shake coco bop love rock and then, when she was done the boys in the band serviced her every need. Even did a pedicure while flossing her teeth. A woodpecker rapping out a beat is telling me that the story line needs more punch.”

“Thar’ ya go again. Fuking crazier than a loon in heat. It’s time for the immolation Namaya. Suttee. Who will jump in the fire first? Will the cow jump over the fireplace – or will the cow eviscerate herself, leap bung side up, and land as a nice rotisserie of meat? Wasn’t that the Christ thing – the offering of spirit to meat? Baet Lahem?”

“So Namaya, will you give the crowd a big cheer, give them something to celebrate and be so kind as to jump on the auto de fie?

“Can I wait to die first?”

“No, no! A live sacrifice is always best! Will you be a sport?”

You can be the suttee sacrifice of you own immolation.

Then we vanish. Completely gone. Disintegrating. Vanishing in a breath. Hi ho silver! Away! And the Calvary? They’ve impaled themselves on their vanities, surrounded by the Fu-kowis, and now the tribe is on the loose. Another incineration, another incarceration. Metaphors exceeding the weight and ability of similes to carry themselves forward to the nexus of love. In the nexus, plexuses, and – Jesus Christ you know where I’m going nex us – Oedipus Plexipus – a lost species that was a derivation of an illegitimate birth. Bastards! Row to shore. Pirates on the stern and the gang plank. Send the odd, winken blinken, and well basted turkeys to the oven.

Audience, reader, whom- the-fuck-ever. But the stern gang? Jewish terrorists bombing the King David. Mazel Tov love! Zionist rapist!

As we sailed on the Ganges river in the dark. Like sacrificial lambs we were lead down a street to the river, then an alleyway that was damp and smelled of donkeys and shit, we found ourselves on a narrow pier, it juts out to the water, a rickety leaky skiff with a blind man at the oars was prepared to take us down river on the Ganges. The morning tourists watching the svengali abolutionist bathing in the hepatic waters. What doesn’t kill you, will make you stronger. In that case, this remedy of Ganges water is bullet proof. If you survive your daily bath in the Ganges, nothing will kill you.

The blind man with the tubercular cough leaned on the oars, a rattle in his chest and a stream of blood tinged spit leaped into the water, it was dark when we departed, but a tubercular cough with a death rattle it is fair to imagine the bright red blood from his lungs

PART OF THE L

S

D

Or if the LDS was truly hip and polygamy recapitulated into fellatio then Queen Isabella would be fulfilling her wondrous roll. They named a stamp after Phi lactic Philistia. Better then filling up your gas tank.

THE LAST SUPPER:

Where Jasus, 2/3 rds brother to the prophet and James, sat down had a cold case of beer and split it with the boys. While Mary and the J-man copped the scene and were working on the transcendent plane of the Kama Sutra, 747 special express, greased, lubed and ready to roll.

“Raise a glass! To the J-man and the half pikers.”

Time is a permeable membrane. Back on the river—a single streak of orange squeezed from the night, saturated the horizon, and spread like the glass of juice clumsily knocked over by a hand. Hell, that is a fucking clumsy metaphor. I pretended that I had taken a hit of MFA acid and see my writing was completely buggered. Stay away from the MFA’s—more seductions there than on a Friday night at Neukirk in Amsterdam. Red lights. More of the colors of the river.

What compels you? Can someone help the old man row. I look into his eyes, cataract covered, I splash water from the river on my hands, its practically alive with vermin and parasites, I touch a bit to his forehead, and kiss each eye.

He’s still blind, but it made me feel better. Isn’t that ultimately what healing is about?

It’s about me, isn’t it.

Okay, I was teasing you, don’t take it so damn personally. The real story is this – rowing to the sea, abolutionist, fakirs, naked saddhus, and the goddamn bloated corpse of a brown and white cow was floating by. A Holstein? Shades of Vermont peer through the curtain.

To the left, is the most famous brothel in all of Benares overlooking the religionists on the shores, one holds the power of god and the other is phoning their stockbroker. But Saddhus on one leg is like a stork and he submerges his body in the river.

I too seek absolution in my madness. Resolving the imponderables by making this voyage, the river smells of decay and feces, and to make things juicier

Row, row, backwards in time. The onomonopia of onanism

Li Pon Noisy Monk Again

Li Pon Noisy Monk Again

“When you write, you have to be careful about turning to the left.”

Li Pon leaped on my bed

made himself quite comfortable,

and played a pan pipe.

“Foolish poet!

Solstice day, time to play!”

I was in a surly mood and

wanted to spend the day writing.

“Get away from me monk! I’m

writing – I can’t be bothered

by your foolish chatter.”

“Indeed! You’re writing, careful

what’s on the left!” he laughed

so hard he fell off the bed.

“I have something far better

than your silly scribbling.”

“Leave me alone monk! No one trifles

with a poet in the midst

of making love with a muse! Not even Li Pon.”

I slammed the door behind him.

“Damn noisy monk!”

I heard more giggling

in the background.

Now back to the story I was writing:

I followed the journey which began

with a dream, I was in Marrakech

in Djemaa Al Fna and

knew this by the astringent smell

of leather dyes, cumin, coriander, spices

from the markets mixed with donkey shit…

I took the hidden entrance that faces south to the mosque, there are no names to the streets, they’re referred to as the House of Saiid Al Hadid or some other person who lived there in centuries past or even now – if you wanted to find someone’s house—Mohammed the baker whose brother is the tinsmith—otherwise you had no business

going down that street. It was not a street for tourists, they were consumed by the yawning mouth of the souvenir, carpet and tchchka shops. Flutes and the oued rose upwards from the inner sanctum of the Medina and I followed the thread of the music, the winding coil that lead to the center of a chambered nautilus. Down an alley so tiny, a man could easily touch each house and a fully loaded donkey could scratch the walls with its load. Centuries peeled back. I followed the music like a snake enchanted by a flute playing faquir. A woman in a face veil from Essouria appeared with a child in tow, a soccer ball rolled down the street and I kicked it back, smells of fresh cumin, coriander and fried onions filled my senses, and I came to a small square that opened to the ruddy snow covered Atlas mountains. I was lost. To the right was a café and a noisy crowd, and one loud squeaky voice singing a Mandarin Chinese love song in reggae rap, approximately translated as: “Me love ya/ Me Love ya/ because your/ backside so wide/ me love/ me love/ po po love/ po po love.”

There could be only one source of such absurdity. In the middle of the tavern, a bubbling fountain of giggles surrounded by a Moroccan ska band, as Li Pon looked up at me and winked.

“Did I imagine you again?” he said to me. “When you write you have to be careful about turning to the left.”

Holy Shores

Holy Shores

Ocean waves

crack

thunderously holy

on the breakers

revelation from

Saint Ignatius

patron saint of bruises

and fine wine.

Port Said on the Red Sea

where the 4 prophets waded

ashore.

Jesus ascribed as Inka

Mohammed, in drag as the

anti-Christ looking raggedy

wild-eyed as Charlie Manson

said, “Dinka!” Rolled

a joint and passed it on.

“Allah Akhbar indeed.” said

the J man while blowing smoke

rings through a cliché.

Lord Krishna claimed Dinka

cavorted lustily with his

maidens in the 998 1/2 positions of

the Kama Sutra. The ½ pike

for the one legged boy, fish piked and

polled, Plato swam with the

naked boys and proclaimed Agape

above Logos.

Soap on a rope invented by Athenians.

Buddha worked as a short order

chef in a Reno brothel

was only to glad to accommodate

transcendence,

“One with everything?”

(Please, please, this is a serious tale

and no time for your verbal buggery.)

“Stand tall!” called the captain, “Seal the

bung holes! All these assholes will

be tight as a frog’s bung – water tight.”

Have you ever seen a water logged frog

floating inconsequently away,

leaf like swaying down stream?

“Row! Row! To the farther shore.”

said the Israelite Jacob. “Inconsequentially sailing to

redemption as the sea of reeds parts—Her legs spread wide

in the August sun!” said Ishmael to Isaac. Each sailor bent down to the shrine and kissed

the delta Venus as tenderly as they would the Madonna’s cheek.

What say the thunder to revelation?

“Higgly higgly higgly pog.” said the Po ‘bo to the ho. “Weed the garden!”

“Hoe to the ‘hoe. Land ho! Called the lst Mate. While the boatswain’s

mate swung high in his love nest by the moon, passionately engaged with

the cabin boy, rocking joyfully. ”

Voluptuous moon ripe as a virgin’s clitoris,

shadows cavort on the forecastle, while they sailed down from Aqaba to Hodeidah. Moon light’s dance on the phosphorescent waters burst diamond thrilling effervescent across the water, we made love in the languid tide, mercury silver alluring with each parting of the wave.

Captain jealous, impotent as spilled gin, could only hold the boy in his

imagination

“Ibbidy bibbidy bop.” said the prophet Fred

“Fiddly, fiddly fidly pop.” said the

poo bear to the pope.

Walking backwards, looking for the thread of the argument,

the integument that binds the story, weaves shadows and light,

a butterfly turns in the widening gyre, a pearl spun from the gossamer

threads of simple desire.

Seagulls

shriek, a feast

for the sightless. Alms given at St Paul’s and the orphan

pigeons from Trafalgar Square perch like vultures on Black Friar bridge waiting for

the next victim of scandal. What bonny blue eyes shall be tasted?

Desires are the room for the holiest of desires.

Inka

Dinka

Dinka

Do.

Farewell

Spring roars to life

in a bounding leap

to summer play.

Moonlight skinny

dipping in June as

stars anoint our loving.

August languid heat

and pools of sweat

dissolve in our cold pond.

When green seems to

hold permanent sway,

one fire red leaf appears.

Geese circle the pond,

blue jays disappear, and

Blue Heron debuts again.

Leaves in their dried

rustling bones reverie

whisper farewell.

All too soon, our

dreams to cherish