the deeper

the deeper we sound

                        obscure notes tantalize our ears

               held Whole  they force a howl that paints foolish space

      or are stabbed to death by staccato

                                                                       splashing slick gobs on humid walls

and then desperate to hide their flinty steel

deeper

and deeper

our eyes and noses are negligible  blinded and stuffed

we try to touch our original foundations

                                                                  although they are lost    there were no thoughts

or imagination that they could be preserved for future suns because their lives

were so very tenuous  lacking surety   without a founding for themselves

                                                                                                                        so our basis 

is spoiled

its remnant  like dried clay  resists reconstitution     it rides like fractured ash on misted

beads

            it seems irradiated    it shimmers with reflections

deeper

I have tried to sound my own depth   my earliest reckonings   but they elude me as 

perhaps they should 

                                   I am extemporaneous  they have no need of me

I think I need

though I know I want

and this wanting is no reason to be met

deeper

deeper

I should be satisfied   I am

begun 1120, Monday,  5  8. 13

from Thomas Mann’s Joseph and His Brothers: “The deeper we sound, the further down

into the lower world of the past we probe and press, the more do we find that the

earliest foundations of humanity, its history and culture, reveal themselves

unfathomable.”

lager

some liked lager

it went down like a drunken fuck without kindness or memory

and either as easy as taking a piss

his dad  he loved lager

a cheap canned lager

it passed his lips as easily as the word nigger

                                                                             which made him scratch his head 

because racism wasnt in his upbringing                                                                  

and he couldnt imagine anything that was unfortunately learned couldnt be unlearned

particularly by a smart man                                                                                             

and his dad exhibited considerable smarts

                                                                            it left him to surmise his grandfather 

was the bigot who perhaps swore his dad to a blood oath

to be unrelenting

it reminded him of black and white photographs of Ku Klux Klan rallies and the young 

childrens faces captured in the flickering torch light or bonfires or bright burning crosses

Knights they called themselves

Knights who hid their identity under floursack hoods

whose photographs reminded him of the Scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz

                                                                                                  “. . . if I only had a brain”

L. Frank Baum might have been a subtle genius   or he had again given a man far more 

credit that he deserved

hed credited his dad all his life

though  obviously  his objectivity was skewed by being too close to the subject

love is a lousy lens to view anything through

if he forced himself to be dispassionate

the evidence was overwhelming

if he were serving on a jury and instructed a guilty verdict could only be reached if he 

had no reasonable doubts

Knew the mans intention

Knew what the man was thinking at the moment  of the commission  

                                                                                                                     of his crime

he could not be persuaded to vote not guilty

the strict accountability he learned was from his dad

                                                                                          you sleep in the bed you make   

it was so easy

even a child could remember

1830,  Sunday,  11  8. 13     

lovely

he thought they were stars

hewed around his stooped shoulders and mane

they erupted in shunted flares   like abrupt butterfly wings or slender almonds

                                       our eyes play tricks on us if we let them  if we dont call them out

and he always afforded his a dramatic berth

as long as theyre seeing unaided   unalloyed

                                                                                                                       unentertained

he saw curious things that never happened or would exist

and for them a gentle perverse smile twisted onto his face

                                                             their reckoning was held privately inside his head   

         a solemn campfire counsel   a peacepipe smoked between them

his eyes always felt they existed in toto before his brain and by that surly lance stabbed

in the surfwetted beachhead of sentient existence  it always ran separate of the rest of

him

it placed its ample bets with the freshly made neocortex   mesmerized by the fantasy of

its vastly corrugated face 

they becoming faceted like insect compoundeyes  

and through the paleocortex as mediator they argued against the archicortex 

                                                                                                                        but it smelled

his eyes claimed  even before they were presented

the archicortex bore the mock of memory and recalled this reoccurring ride time and time

again

                  and braced

his eyes shrugged

conceded

and departed counsel

they went back to what they did best

fabricating

they werent stars

they were an array of tinshaded soft lamps backlighting a guitarist

                                                                 through his eyes  a romantic bloodhued mist

lovely

if lovely isnt true

does it really matter

2018,  Thursday,  14  8. 13