....From The Tree Of............Sudden Joys
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_______________________________________________________ The Hyperbole Of Failure Some names hang from history like ornaments; we cannot help but love them for their sound. They have the ring of originality: you know they must have paragraphs trailing behind them like a circus troop, acrobats and aerialists geeks and elephants. A name like Jubal Early doesn't come round that often. The stooped man with a rage against Reconstruction rode his horse despite an agony of arthritis. Burned Chambersburg for spite and galloped off, his hat plume glowing red as the invectives he was famous for. Old Jube, who later hated Longstreet almost as much as he hated Lincoln, maybe more, since they were brothers sworn by all accounts to make sure that Bobbie Lee was blameless when the fires of the old South burned out for good; Jubal took Longstreet in his teeth and chewed and chewed. He died shaking his fist, and bent backed, swept a broom along the roads they'd ridden, covering their tracks. Jubal, an antediluvian name, descendent of Cain whose father Lamech killed a man and wrote a song about it. Jubal rewrote history, of death's high purpose singing which were heros, which were villains -singing despite the curling of his bones the curls of smoke and all the blood soaked, curling pages since. How This is not for the puny. This is not for the harlots of academia who'd sell their souls for a Pushcart, this is for the crazy, the freaked, the boozed-up without-booze and battered beyond words by the scrape of jackboot consonants but are nevertheless hugged hungry by the softsoft vowels that bind the wounds between: I mean the lovers of language alone: the hellcats howling the midnight buzz from trash cans lids of their own making, bleeding purple, orange moonlight revelations, seeing angels on the inside of the eyelids, wanting to write it out, write them out of the eyes and get them down for good and keeps. This is for the creeps without degrees, who nonetheless hear music in John Donne, enough to bring on sounds of fog and loss from the pure leapt love of it. This is a man racing a freight train caring not a whit what will be made of tense agreement; verbs are lustful always, in any form, poured straight from the bottle, gerunding to hell and back the 'ing, ing, ing' of active, singing like choir tenors then slipping the long, thin blade of present between the slatted ribs; ribs that Adam had as he longed for something and bayed beside the wolf who was- in the time before the fall- a friend, and under stood his wretched hungers: first for woman, then for god, then for something else that - something- I'm trying to type it out here- afraid that if I stop the words will turn to death, but now, right now these words are breath and the rack of God and His holy thrum, and wicked devilment through all, my ears worn shiny from the sounds. I need to get a least a part of it down before I go, buthow? God Audible Hobble-klobble, clipclop, horse's hooves counting off the Belgian blocks -dependable Main Street somewhere, where at the outskirts you hear tumble-rumble water, maybe a falls- a small one plashing under a sorcery of leaves in evening wind- off in the distance, the summer maracas crickets rubbing legs, leaning on the everlasting arms of ever-childhood. They start the heart-hurrahs of joy -sounds to count the stars by- lost in shushing grass, sweet as day is long in summer, long into the softest creeping twilight, moonclock slowly sweeping hand by hand, not fighting sun, and everyone's alive and breathing fiercely, begging day to last, and of course, they do- all the way, and right to near the end when we look down and are amazed at just how 'old' a child we are, while with roping, mottled skin, we touch a night that's still so wonderfully febrile, still as desperately young. It's then we taste the tension in God's keeping to His blue-black, blue-black blue, rolling up the years as though there's no years, only blinks too quick to count, in a flume of ceaseless yearning poised in poignant, simultaneous dying, birth and burning of an End that's always New, like the sounds of a perfect summer's night, some day. Flesh Sounds Smack happy clap of hand to hand that signifies delight. We all know the meaning in the act of whacking one hand with the other. There are others, too. The squish of penis pushing through the gripped walls of vaginal tight- the rasp of hand rubbing up its own and opposite arm to coax the warmth back in. The drag of sandpaper on concrete of the close shave. The crack of palm to ass, congratulatory or erotic punctuation and the best and almost silent press of soft lip to soft lip; the tiny blip of sound when they pull free. It's reassurance that we're all pumping blood. A stethoscope would feed the whoosh,whoosh, whoosh into the ear and you would know a happy sound; that you are dancing on the xylophonic keyboards just like everyone, a cutaneous cacaphony, wholly banged in praise of noisy disarray, the messiness and music of the flesh. sunburned heart layered leaves time dried comes wind wants rhyme dance piles dance, old hooligan heat green- go back be pink new lick of sun touch eyes heart feet low kicked high burn deep glow-- soles and all. Grace Stand still long enough and you will feel your skin, will be inside it so that every hair pricks proud moves like little wheat stalked gol- den goosebumped sheathe you're waving birds you are the wing of some bright god li ness. The life you dare is far beyond the outer spaces- try it, nitro breathing in and out and out and in the sound of what you are and it is good. By The Roots Weeding gives a satisfaction close to nearly perfect, bent and bringing will and strength to task at hand, rough grip on stem and the fatter, the more fiercely defiant not to be stripped away, the better it feels: it's one sharp "no" to what we will not suffer- weeds are every tongue, every grief, every one that hung us from their meathooks; we're that Indian in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, ripping out the sink: the heavy glory with a richness like mahogany sounds brown, but reaching high notes at the wrench and painful, crazy lift- the mastery, like murder of that part of self that cowers is where pulling by the roots can take you, sweated, in purely physical, nearly sexual spill of joy when things ........let go. Heaven Cannot Help Us When will the haphazard stars stop in their courses; see that their dog tug on fate is unwelcome to one so used to tying her own shoes, punching down days to make them more comfortable, and guessing which box the god's in. We waste more time conspiring with those liars better spent in seeing which way the land lies, moving on or over- underneath ourselves, getting a full eye's worth of remembered looks of grief, confusion- joy: dumb felt joy. Don't ever lose it; you'll be fine. Cathedral If you walk along a beach with nobody there, there's an amazing silence full of God: it's all about space -the way the light drops off the edge of page, a foreverness of sky. The waging war of water on sand, its tickling touch on toes that when ignored becomes a smacked, 'I am' whose thrill's belief -not even a choice, whose thief is leaving where, what's walked on is His voice and you know the pavement never sings like that. not for children sometimes moving lava in the skull turned cold, takes shape and on its surface is scribed ..........something i have to figure out, resurrect beat to death and in fury, i take my head and beat it, beat it against the table, pound it till it's soupy, till it yields the goddamned poem up then comes the unmerciful re writes- commas, dashes blank white spaces, scariest of all, how long to make a line to have it dance a nice quadrille, that's something makes me bloodiest of all, the bastards run on you- i tell you, it will be my death and like a masochistic pain-eater, i love it god i do On To Page 8 .............. Return To Contents This site sponsered by 
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