How blessed that red ribbon — crosstown view — 1978 I can only describe what I read times what I believe and I know nothing here’s among the five false sun- flowers where the water comes on high and tehuantepec yesss crosstown traffic among crows these are windows / not rules but also rulers / also cans and bottles emphasizing broad pale embarkment buttressing five yellow zinnias / goddammit why countless empty bowls? why the abandonment of systems dead biology dead language dead view five pot marigolds i forgive you all.
imagine koch met another koch
what brotherless friendship
othered even these plants’ music
the moirai graduates shack up on center street
and sap wondersided all three conversing for
many years with any living man
append the loose fringe of life
three-story building wits growing seemly
never the end of the world war
and for many years
it was a centered king living white hairs
divided into three-story buildings
and for many years
it was a quarrel
overrule eating anyone
seeds seem imagine
seeds seemed from kralupy
there was a giant that could grow seeds inside himself
from kralupy he stood
on these places
dry and wondersided a peerless wit
sap graduate lit out
her nerve expected rigor
on the book of the bad queen ananke
in white hairs divided in 1948
after places painters use white hairs
skin conium the back scars white hairs
divided into white hairs on hungry green leaves
three-story center a graduate street
a painterly fact the sprite in her oval eyes
every sap wondering about aeschylus’ life
the back scars were made
freilicher brought daucus candlestock to lower manhattan
her life in three-story buildings
in aeschylus’ life small atropos
in white hairs shell-case of destinies
dry and even third avenue at sixteenth street
a painter’s taste of three-story building anyone?
seems imaginable so much beautiful writing
in 1948 a graduate student travels to greece
and never returns it stood on top of a spool of thread
in my life three-story buildings imagine fact
beauty in bullet form imagine kenneth koch
met aeschylus and the bad queen
nature’s fate seems by comparison its power
fact: the case of places
dry and very small
atropos in our life
he powers
the center
of hope
four inches in aeschylus’ life
three-stories at the center of a poem
fringed many years’ white hairs
skin conium their family book of brunette
with oval epitome and strong seeds
seems a comparison koch met giants who live for men
append friendship and very funny poems
imagine kralupy it was a quarrel overruled
eating graduate students’ exceptional epitome moirai
group of genealogies
the fates lick ash
nature family their family ween
ananke in aeschylus’ life powers a quarrel
overrule eating it seems from the potion of the parcae
yes, we muddle language probably because fates best god
but later the giant allots lachesis
in her english way it’s clear to fate
the book of destinies from each into each
his eating of the fates their brotherless friendship
and even the word hector all atropos inflexible
never a moiragetes but man’s appellation of hope
four inches long
seeds seeds seeds
dry and euripides’ poison hemlock
conium that centers fact
the end of places
in this dry medical form
men / stumble around / a bag of steaming chicken bones
but not-doing
en stumbles
chicken bones here
men stumble chicken bones here
men stumble
chicken
bones here
men stumble around a bag of steaming chicken bones here
men stumble
flip flops and
broadway in chicken bones cheap
men stumble chicken
bones
here
men cheap cheap
stumble chicken bones
here
men stumble
around clucking cheap
bag of steaming chicken
bones
here
men chicken boned out on
men stumble
around
bag of steaming chicken bones
chicken
bones here
men stumble around
a bag of steaming chicken bones here
men stumble
chicken bones here
men stumble chicken bones
here
men flip flop
broadway
in fucking flip flops
and faded-red-lipstick-on-tossed-off-marlboro
shorts
not listening but not-doing that's for sure
it
listen but not-doing
en stumble
chicken bones here cheap
men
stumble chicken
bones here
men stumble
chicken bones here
men stumble
men
stumble
around a
bag of steaming
chicken bones here
en
stumble
chicken bones en here en
men cheap men stumble around
steaming
men stumble
chicken boned here
men stumble around a bag
men
stumble flip flops and broadway
fucking chicken bones
down there
men stumble
chicken bones
here
men stumble in flip flops
around
broadway and spring street
in
fucking
chicken
bones
men
stumble bones
chickens
stumble
over men oven-pigs
men stumble
chicken
bones
here
men
stumble chicken
bones here
men stumble chicken
bones here
men stumble around a bag
of steam
around a
bag
of steam playin' chicken there
men
stumble
men
stumble
chicken'n
bones
here
men there chicken there
bones
here and hear
men do not hear
chicken bones
hear
hairy men chant
stumble in flip
chicken-
bone flop
men flip chicken bones here
men flip
bones here
men
stumble
over at above against bones
here chicken chant
yellow stumbling chicken shit
bones
men wear chicken bones
when it suits them
men stumble
chicken bones
here
men stumble
in spring street on flip flops and
broadway phantom lovers
phantoms their damn selves
“of the demon: ¡demonio! Sumother-tongued / lengua::lingua palaver::palabra muele::muela-like / a sharpened tooth grinds as grounded / so they who can can saw::see::saw past-to-present / perfect // tense” elena minor
“I have only two charms in my pocket” Frank O’Hara
All photographs copyright Joseph M. Gerace/wikipoem.org
