¡Bemsha SWING!

That's not a cross look it's a sign of life. Hate is only one of many responses. True, hate and hurt go hand in hand. Who'd have thought that snow falls. It always circled. So many echoes in my head. There is this to be said for Sunday morning, that if I have been very bad the night before and feel like a drab on a sunny day, Dick will pop by and invite me out to the high, abandoned airfield. There the sun will seem properly chilly. Grace to be born and live as variously as possible. The only way to be quiet is to be quick,so I scare you clumsily or surprise you with a stab. A praying mantis knows time more intimately than I and is more casual. Good fortune! you would have been my teacher and I your only pupil, and I would always play again, secrets of Liszt and Scriaban whispered to me over the keyboard unsunny afternoons. I don't know what D.H Lawrence was driving at when he spoke of lust rising from the bowels. Or do I. I wanted to be sure to reach you. I am the least difficult of men. I'm getter rather Lorcaesque lately and I don't like it. Better my poetry were than my lives. Instant coffee with slightly sour cream in it. All things are tragic when a mother watches. So I had to break his watch. My heart is in my pocket, it is Poems by Pierre Reverdy. Ah Jean Dubuffet! When you think of him doing his military service.

My quietness has a number of naked selves.

My inspiration in part was in some Lorca poems that used the device of the every other line refrain. "Son de los negros en Cuba" is one of them." I realized it was like stringing beads on a thread. The odd-numbered lines don't have to have much to do with each other explicitly, since there is so much continuity in the refrain itself. It's a compensation.

I have a poem called "Silent, upon a peak in Darien." It is different in every performance. Basically, what you do is alternate a line or phrase floating in your memory with the line "Silent, upon a peak in Darien," and go along for as long as you feel like it.

My Momma done tole me
Silent, upon a peak in Darien
These are amazing, each
Silent, upon a peak in Darien
A la cinco en punto de la tarde
Silent, upon a peak in Darien
The way you sip your tea
Silent, upon a peak in Darien
Silent, upon a peak in Darien
Silent, upon a peak in Darien
Somewhere, over the rainbow,
Silent, upon a peak in Darien
The endless fights, the sleepless nights
Silent, upon a peak in Darien
I heard a flie buzz, when I died
Silent, upon a peak in Darien
I love you as a Sherrif searches for a walnut
Silent, upon a peak in Darien
Among twenty snowy mountains
Silent, upon a peak in Darien
The way you wear your hat
Silent, upon a peak in Darien
A fine romance
Silent, upon a peak in Darien
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Silent, upon a peak in Darien
I never cared much for moonlight skies
Silent, upon a peak in Darien
As I sd to my friend, because I am always
Silent, upon a peak in Darien
John, sd, which was not his name
Silent, upon a peak in Darien
Rose-cheekd Laura, come,
Silent, upon a peak in Darien
As the cat climbed over
Silent, upon a peak in Darien
the top of the
Silent, upon a peak in Darien
jamcloset
Silent, upon a peak in Darien

Not necessarily in this order, but

Rodgers and Hart, George and Ira Gershwin, Duke Ellington and Billy Stayhorn, Harold Arlen, Cole Porter, Johnny Green, Johnny Mercer, Irving Berlin. Jerome Kern, Fats Waller, Dorothy Fields, Rodgers and Hammerstein...

What can I say, I'm a sucker for a good song. It's just one of those thiings, just one of those marvelous things, a trip to the moon on gossamer wings. A foggy day in London town.. A piano tinkling in the next apartment, those stumbling things that told you what my heart meant. Someone to watch over me.

I never thought much of moonlight skies, I never winked back at fireflies. The way you wear your hat. The way you sip your tea. The way we danced till three. A fine romance. You say tomato and I say tomahto. Suddenly I saw polkdots and moonbeams. I'm going to sit right down and write a letter and make believe it came from you. I'm a sentimental sap that's all, what's the use of trying not to fall. Holding hands at midnight, neaht the moonlit sky, It's nice work if you can get it and you can get it if you try. It's the tender trap. Tangerine, with her lips of flame. In the wee small hours of the morning. East of the sun and west of the moon, and then I saw the midnight sun. It's moonlight in Vermont and Autumn in New York, April in Paris. I'll remember April and be glad.

I bought you violets for your furs. I get no kick from cocaine. I can't get started with you.

All of me, why not take all of me. Can't you see, I'm no good without you. You got the part that once was my heart so why not take all of me.

I feel another cento coming on...

In a naked bed, in Plato's cave, this lovely day will lengthen into evening. We'll sigh goodbye to everything we ever knew. Alone, where we have walked together, I'll remember April and be glad. I won't be afraid. I loved you once in April. Your lips were warm, and love and spring were new. So I won't be afraid of Autumn and its sorrows, cause I'll remember, April and you. April is the cruellest month. April in Paris, chestnuts in blossom. Chestnuts roasting on an open fire, jack frost nipping at your nose. That one knew the eccentric to be the base of design.

Hedge crickets sing. From oriole to crow, note the decline in music. Crow is realist, but then, oriole, too, might be realist. Children picking up our bones will never know that these were once as qujick as foxes on the hill. Left what must have been the look of things. One must have a mind of winter to behold stately, plump, Buck Mulligan. Si creererán estos tontos que me engañan: esto es Leganés. Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain. Anyone lived in a pretty how town, what if a much of a which of a wind. My mind's not right. Con qué seguro paso el mulo en el abismo. How to improve the world (you'll only make things worse). I contain multitudes. A formal feeling comes. The bible is an antique volume; heavenly hurt it gives us. My days have grown so lonely, I sigh for you, for you my only. I'm all for you, body and soul. A sweet disorder in the dress. In rivers north of the future I cast my nets out, which you painstakingly load with words written by the shadows. You did not come.

Tell her that's fair and scorns to have her beauty seen. Last night I dreamed the strangest dream I ever dreamed before. My Momma said not to put beans in my ear, beans in my ears, beans in my ears. My Momma done tole me, when I was in knee-pants. My Momma done tole me, "Son...." A subject and a predicate made of glass. You have entered the narrow zone, your portrait etched in glass becoming less and less until the future faces you, like the mapie you hid. Music, when soft voices die.... Softly, in the dusk... taking me down the vista of years, till I see a child sitting under the piano.