Nothing but a boulder-man now, that's me. I've become a rock in the road I used to travel. Pry and roll me, young vagabonds--tip me over the side. I'll smash some brush or hit a tree--hell, maybe bang into the red-rusted chassis of a '54 Ford, all covered over with weeds. And you if young may think, Wow, cool--that sound!
It's just me, boulder-man, me and gravity--one dance before last call, tumble-tumble: one dance.
Friday, September 23, 2011
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
179. Is, Was, Lew Welch, Weldon Kees
You live in Is but think in Was. To Be has become something of a joke, a narrow corridor with doors at the end opening on to a bone-yard.
Was isn't, but you may pretend it is. What is consciousness besides memory?
Details fatigue: a gray sparrow on white gravel in what was East Berlin; a sauna full of nude, genial people in Uppsala; a red bloody torn lip in Sacramento; a coiled rattlesnake beneath honey-smelling brush, Sierra Nevada.
To live in Is is to complete tasks and then wait. Boredom and fear compose ennui, a cold French stew.
Politics numbs because it's corrupt, often evil, but also deadly boring. Deadly.
You wonder where Lew Welch's remains ended up, the .30-.30 rifle next to them in some Sierra Nevada ravine, not far from the South Fork of the Yuba River. Was he wearing Levi's with red thread? Lew's move is not a move you want to imitate, but it was a move. Was. Somebody will stumble on a bone or two.Will.
Not so with Weldon Kees, the car left on the red Golden Gate Bridge, the gray current below, so terribly efficient--like life itself. Play us some going-home music, Mr. Kees. A great chord on a golden piano.
Was isn't, but you may pretend it is. What is consciousness besides memory?
Details fatigue: a gray sparrow on white gravel in what was East Berlin; a sauna full of nude, genial people in Uppsala; a red bloody torn lip in Sacramento; a coiled rattlesnake beneath honey-smelling brush, Sierra Nevada.
To live in Is is to complete tasks and then wait. Boredom and fear compose ennui, a cold French stew.
Politics numbs because it's corrupt, often evil, but also deadly boring. Deadly.
You wonder where Lew Welch's remains ended up, the .30-.30 rifle next to them in some Sierra Nevada ravine, not far from the South Fork of the Yuba River. Was he wearing Levi's with red thread? Lew's move is not a move you want to imitate, but it was a move. Was. Somebody will stumble on a bone or two.Will.
Not so with Weldon Kees, the car left on the red Golden Gate Bridge, the gray current below, so terribly efficient--like life itself. Play us some going-home music, Mr. Kees. A great chord on a golden piano.
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