“MAD WOLF IN LUNAR WEB,
MAD CROW ON THE BEACH

A PLACE YOU NEVER THOUGHT TO
LAY SHADOW ON,
Seething in
white mist
its perennial
Nipp’d. Not for
But a violent storm
opened above us
like a flower
Maple.
You can taste a
Dubbed
to be spoken,
behind the fire-wall
Our hexed American
Refusal to size up
a crook
For what he is. Just a
Gone bushwhacking.
Ask old Mister
Strangeways what
Liminoid.
When you draw the
Wrong water you
Spill human blood and
No passing. An escadrille
Fishtailing in the blue,
the face of blue
Death staring up at
Not to grow fond

Death has done something
I’m done with fixing up
As it were a kindness
On the part of the world
What we have given it;
Slow fading and perfect
To rid the world of one more
While it passes over the
Death has done a thing
Death be damned
I spit at death
What you show
Shows at all times
Nothing but what life has
Shown you, life’s plagiarist.
Not strand of auburn,
not a freckle,
but as life’s gift.

The old
Dragon variation
I am skilled at
Wolf. Rayet
Who knows what that
Think it through
Lure of the ladyhair’s
Coma
Comet,
The cool apparition
Cold in its show
Of heat. But what’s hot
Live in the sparkling
Pushing full tilt to the
Peekaboo. It slides out
in the starlit surf
Din. Minions of the
Great Sleep say
Unstarred. Crow
Wing-walking my
way all the way to
Courage to find
through the amaze
Thread. It goes on
not if you don’t be
brave enough to
I am a fool
ed. Illusioned
ing. Fast to what
Sunlight creeps along
Shapes of the lovely
Hills and meadows
Park in morning,
Daisy, I love thee
Courage, no thing but
Courage. Blue
Scrub the
Mission for the
Moment’s on fire.
Going around afeard, well
Defies the dry
lake, the windy
sandy rivers
All supposal. We are
not I am worse off
for being hexed, in
love with Wildfire.
So most.
In slow motion,
Sure self-portrait
In mist, lost time,
A relic
Of all act and push-
Matter;
hop, track, grasp, exit;
unearth, dice, cook, exit;
burgle, array, speak, exit
prove, notch, imp, exit;
groan, off, sing, exit;
The thing’s horrid squeak.
To last forever after, all.
Because a shadow
careering
500 mph
still’s a shadow.
Quaked, too.
Because it can
turn into what
that it mocks.
How to get from
One day to the next
Without thinking.
So that the giant rock face
crumbles, the illusory
Spindrift, the rearing
Immelmans,
The rottening slow roll
Spinning in the creep
Comes to a grinding halt.”

--Mac Wellman, in: From the Other Side of the Century (ed. Messerli, 1994)

Listening to: Yes- Close to the Edge (I used to have on 8-track!)