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Author: Bartleby

I’d settle for you

I’d settle for you

I’d settle for you
said the spider to the fly
on the web sticky
and dotted morning dew.

You’re sturdy in mind
body, heart, and stuff.
Your eggs so clear
and begging for it.
I’d settle on you
and make you my home
a colony of sorts
some kind of love.

I’m getting older now
and I’m sick of pretending
so I’ll hand it all to you
if you want to hold it all,
about which you may
or may not now know.

I accept your court
said the fly to the approaching fangs.
I’ve asked for this ever since
I was seven and now you’re here.
I’ll lay real still until you
take over my body, blooming me
like I’ve waited for ever since
I was young and began to feel
the knots wiggle and wrangle inside,
asking to untie and become
some kind of a woman,
the kind I need to be.

I’m looking for you
said the tiger to the ewe,
the gorgon to the virgin,
the weed to the lawn.

I’ve been waiting for you
she said.

To a young Australien

To a young Australien

The longings
and the things not there
The children
and the magic undiscovered
The friendship
and distortions from way back.

Sorry to the wind
over a winding nothing moment
come across the desert
where ‘roos bound
and white men crack peel
melanoma on cable TV.

A nice young lady
living for dreams
not unreasonable
A boring older man
unable to get past
a twenty five
he should’ve
quit long ago.

Sorry to unwashed armpits
thinking of a hot maybe British babe
once glimpsed talking pleasant and even
with a twiggy-thin mottled blond British dame
on the subway to the airport.
As if full, down-diving torpedo tits
were all a man could ever see
could ever care for
could ever sacrifice to.

A man on the train,
wishing the jangled jumble
would add up to a kind joy
where he was a man
and someone she
was a woman
somewhere here
in time
before
he has to step aside.

AMW/BW/To A Young Australien and then sauntering off and then wandering back

A Hard Rain Gonna Fall

A Hard Rain Gonna Fall

All you people, walking along all your streetsides,
listening to the air rustle the leaves,
misinformed dogs stand their delusional ground,
cars purr zip and whirr,
children shout high and scamper everywhere,
water-like seeping into all nooks and crannies
of the organized world.

All you people who hear the clank and smell the stench
of stopping, situating, pistoning garbage trunks,
on a new, worn, and/or gum-blackened cement sidewalk,
next to a street fresh paved and punging tar
or old and regular, silently bearing all while sinking low.
All you good people in the cityscapes, bayous, forest hills
who listen to civilized beeps, clanks, cackles, rattles
through the rock the rap the jazz the symphony
pumped ‘cross plastic knobs into your ears.

All you people waving candles and holding hope
for a different tomorrow.

I am here!
You heard that right:
I am here!

You didn’t know I had it in me
to roll up out of that tiny ball, shattering the egg
that sat still since the time of the monsters.
Look at my laughing yellow stalagging teeth.
Understand my smooth dagger claws
and the impenetrable scales shingling my bulk.

For to be, I tell you, a sport,
I gave a sixty thousand year head start.
You built your weapons, powerful enough to destroy the earth–
as if I needed the earth!
You put your systems in place, organized your thoughts,
studied and optimized strategies psychological and physical.
Pardon me, forgive me, excuse me,
I just have to laugh!

A rich, righteous, eloquently strong, booming laugh,
flattening whatever city I’m nearby.
Oh, gosh, my breath’s so inferno, isn’t it?
I quite evaporated your puny fleshy form, didn’t I?
Sorry, sorry–I really need to watch myself!
Don’t know my own strength!
Except I do.
And I’m very ready to show it to you.

That’s right–
good night,
cause you’re going down,
down to the ground
like bugs underfoot.

You have no chance.
You imagine you do,
and that gives you
a certain luster,
a definite cuteness,
a real, if pathetic,
charm.

Oh, oh, OK, sure!
Try that angle,
huddle up in your churchy dens,
cuddling together beneath
fraying, decaying,yellowed, brittle pages
that’ve coddled you on down the ages.
“The demon thing with the dragon wings
and the howling, mean-eyed sing-song-sing
can destroy our bodies but never our souls,
never our heart and the light who keeps us whole!”
So cute,
so lovable,
so very wrong.

Friends, people, don’t you get it?
tearing your puny bodies into jag-edged
bloody rags strewn across telephone wires
and on pavements so sturdy and rough
is not my main game.
I just do that so you get to watch
with your gooshy eyballs
as I sink your heavens,
dungeon your souls,
laugh away your pride,
hiccup off your virtues,
shit upon your wisdoms,
expose as sordid fraud
all your heroics,
your hard-fought insights,
your courageous self-overcomings.

I’m here to tell you that jupiter
must swallow the universes,
and jupiter is cold as spiritual death.
Jupiter is the final answer.
All your wise ones, your fools,
your sturdy practical folks
were all always wrong.
All your human ideas
just so many pebbles
tossed feebly into the gurgle-quick creek.

The joke is on you,
because I’m not even evil.
I’m just the brute facts,
the natural meanness,
the cruel happenstance
of the real.

Sorry!
‘Cept ’cause I’m not.
I don’t care
if I hurt you
now and forever.

Signed,

Your Dragon

AMW/BW

Looking at the Sky

Looking at the Sky

I remember him well, a young man draped over a metal tube bench, looking up as the sunlight dappled through the lightly scurried leaves of the some flame-spreading maple. The green underbellies twisting oh so slightly as they glowed in the sunlight. He wore some kind of T-shirt shorts and black suede ankle-high walking boots with flat rubber soles and he propped his crew-cut head atop on the metal tube arm on one end of the bench, while twisting his body into the crook between benchseat and bench back. An uncomfortable pose, and it didn’t last long. Listening to a best of Credence Clearwater playing on the discman he’d brought with him from his hometown across the sea and through a thousand miles, over plains, across rivers, through forests and towns, over mountains and lakes, cities, and all. He was a young American in early summer in Heidelberg, resting on on a cobblestone plaza in the old part of the university.

The new part of the university is a ways out of the downtown, and as ugly as Bauhaus. But the old part is beautiful old buildings woven into a beautiful medieval town. This building in particular, which had to do maybe with law and/or philosophy, looks charmingly eternal. Red brick at the corners; over each of two front doors, a red-stone arch flanked by small red-stone columns half disappeared into the facade, which is the whitest white; and three stories of a dozen plus red-stone trimmed windows. And the roof a most remarkable undulating barn, covered in black scales, shot through with little portholes aimed straight ahead by what look like extremely sawed-off cannons, and topped off with a black rectangular clock tower, itself completed with a similar looking roof that quickly gives way to a patinated globe-topped staff.

This young man, muscled by youth and tanned by the sun, felt the rustle of the gentle breeze, felt the light fill the air and splash all objects. He saw the brightness of the leaves and the light blue of the cloudless sky. He’d purchased this CD, which now explained that it ain’t no fortunate son, underling the point with it’s folksy rocknrolling,at a flea market in Le Havre.

Have you ever been to Le Havre? It is the favorite destination for overwrought, overleisured young English-speakers exchanging a year away at the University of Heidelberg, and who now–late-May, two-thirds through the second semester of smoking, drinking, goofing off in German, freewriting, and taking a few courses–have, due to a confusing incident itself founded upon a great and still relatively un-self-perceived distance between their minds and their feelings, realized that they must kill their English-speaking self, which–they ramblingly reason–would best be accomplished with a trip to Le Havre in which they continue speaking to themselves nonstop, but for these five days only in their now passable German or their French, which they’ve studied now for one and a half semesters.

But have you ever been there? To Le Havre?

Birthday in Barcelona

Birthday in Barcelona

No one remembers the details of his 21st birthday. There was a tall, plank-thin, tube-limbed, big-eyed, laughing sweet blond guy there. Also a shortish, sturdily curvy, always-tan (with or without the sun’s help), eagerly thoughtful girl with dark brown kinky hair. He’d known them both for some time, but never really talked to the girl. She was more the other guy’s friend. Anyway, there they were. But who remembers what happened or what it looked like?

A beach somehow, sun sparkling on the waves and sand, the happy hoards splashing in the cool waters or basking in the warm air and on the warmer sand. Then darkness, cooler but still warm air, a bright lit bar or restaurant where they drank sangria and conversed. Who can imagine what sorts of things they said?

At that time, at the age of 21, having his birthday in Barcelona without bothering to try to call his parents (it was, to be fair, still kind of tricky and expensive to make international calls in those muggy days before widespread cellphone use). What was going on with him? I cannot tunnel back to him. I like how well his skin accepted the sun, how easily it let the summer brown it. I applaud the rippling of his muscles and the vigor of his movements. I envy the inability of alcohol or–as we’d soon find out–cigarettes to counteract his body’s certainty, it’s exquisitely solid grip on health. I flinch by what he says, and woebegone my eyes while flatten-pursing my lips when I think of the distance between his mind and the rest of him. Creaking, groaning, wobbling, jerking, like a robot trying to move like a human. Painful to watch. But a fun guy, I guess. And so funny, I’ve heard. Who can remember?

Not everything goes well. Sometimes you try to connect what is inside with the outside options and just don’t have the linking structure in place. And what then are the others to think? They stand outside your outside, within their own inside, looking through their own gauzy linking contraption into the common space where you are carrying on so awkwardly. Their wisdom sees your desperation and goes gentle on you. Their own blindness sees things differently. But neither their wisdom nor their blindness can accept a bouquet of flowers tossed hurriedly at their face.

She changes her mind

She changes her mind

She tied her shoelace and looked up, her long muscled butt on the bench, her long stringy blond hair in a pony tail bunched out in the crook of her neck. Pale face, red cheeks, blue eyes. She’ll never make the pros. Why should she want to anyway? The pros don’t make that much and they tire themselves out and wear out their young bones pounding up and down the court.

She’ll never make the pros. She’s always risen early to shoot a few hoops. When she was just a kid, out back on the nice smooth white driveway, shooting freethrows (WNBA marked) in the dusty morning light. And then when she was on the highschool team, early to the gym where she and a few others of both sexes–mostly the other sex–had, with the help of an energetic coaching staff, secured the right to shoot hoops from 6:30AM to 7:30AM. And now every morning at one of the gyms on campus, twisting the rubbery toe of her white hightops into the yellow plastic flooring, reveling in the squeak, setting back on her haunches, ball overhead like a dancing bear she readies herself for the shot.

Maybe she’ll make the pros. But I doubt it. She’s never had the quickness.

The seats are small. Those wrap-around desks of metal tubing and composite plastic colored yellow. Not a super bright yellow, but not a soft yellow. A banana yellow, an industrial yellow. Her long legs in blue jeans (feet in flip flops–like so many in her sorority when the weather permits) sprawl out like a giraffe standing up. In a sorority sweatshirt she–long forearms triangling on the tabletop and long fingers dangling over the edge–leans over talking to a crew-cut young man in a similarly casual and Greek outfit.

She’ll probably be a chemist. Or a doctor. She likes sciences and is very industrious. She doesn’t even want to go pro all that much anymore.

Hero and Lady and King

Hero and Lady and King

The Hero:
She loved me for the dangers I had pass’d,
And I loved her that she did pity them.
This only is the witchcraft I have used:
Here comes the lady; let her witness it.

His Lady:
In dark times wild minds race vainly fore
while gentle heads expand and plop inside
the gooey gel of milk n honey’s mix.
Mistaken both the over and the under strong–
So hold then each Medusa’s writhing locks,
and look away as you hack them aside.

This man, though not so schooled in sciences
entombed in books, is still surpassing skilled
in keeping to the center, where men best
find the happiest course. That’s

The King her father:
I’ve loved you all your life, my child bold
and bright who sparkles ‘gainst this world as stars
against the night.
Your counsels recommend I to those who
counsel me.
So long I’ve trusted in your mind, I must
now trust your heart–for mind and heart do share
quite equal parts in wisdom’s secret art
to know the good and find the path that leads
us flesh and bone spirit casements where
the good would tell us go.

Her father loved me; oft invited me;
Still question’d me the story of my life,
From year to year, the battles, sieges, fortunes,
That I have passed.
I ran it through, even from my boyish days,
To the very moment that he bade me tell it;
Wherein I spake of most disastrous chances,
Of moving accidents by flood and field
Of hair-breadth scapes i’ the imminent deadly breach,
Of being taken by the insolent foe
And sold to slavery, of my redemption thence
And portance in my travels’ history:
Wherein of antres vast and deserts idle,
Rough quarries, rocks and hills whose heads touch heaven
It was my hint to speak,–such was the process;
And of the Cannibals that each other eat,
The Anthropophagi and men whose heads
Do grow beneath their shoulders. This to hear
Would Desdemona seriously incline:
But still the house-affairs would draw her thence:
Which ever as she could with haste dispatch,
She’ld come again, and with a greedy ear
Devour up my discourse: which I observing,
Took once a pliant hour, and found good means
To draw from her a prayer of earnest heart
That I would all my pilgrimage dilate,
Whereof by parcels she had something heard,
But not intentively: I did consent,
And often did beguile her of her tears,
When I did speak of some distressful stroke
That my youth suffer’d. My story being done,
She gave me for my pains a world of sighs:
She swore, in faith, twas strange, ’twas passing strange,
‘Twas pitiful, ’twas wondrous pitiful:
She wish’d she had not heard it, yet she wish’d
That heaven had made her such a man: she thank’d me,
And bade me, if I had a friend that loved her,
I should but teach him how to tell my story.
And that would woo her. Upon this hint I spake:
She loved me for the dangers I had pass’d,
And I loved her that she did pity them.
This only is the witchcraft I have used:
Here comes the lady; let her witness it.

Mr. Mann comes to town

Mr. Mann comes to town

It was a drizzly day in Heidelberg, a town with the oldest university in Germany. I believe the university was founded centuries ago–perhaps 400, or maybe more, it just depends how you look at it.

It was a drizzly October day in Heidelberg, and some 21 year old American exchange student walked down the cobblestop Haupstrasse, smoking a thin cigar. He’d be switching to cigarettes within a few weeks, but he didn’t know it yet.

It was a drizzly October afternoon in Heidelberg, and some 19 year old French exchange student waived to the American exchange student she’d met the other day when all the exchange students had toured the exercise complex.

Let them go, let them slide apart, let them go without meeting, let him just politely wave back and keep moving on, let him drift on past her pretty young face. Don’t let him notice how cute she is, how bright her face shines, how clean her face curves and how big her eyes smile.

Oop! Too late.

Mr. Mann lived next door. Well, not in October, but a little later. In October the girl from Arizona lived next door. She moved to pursue a slightly bigger room on the other hall. There were two halls, and they met at the entrance to the kitchen.

Mr. Mann, who at some point lived next door, was short and homely losing his thick brown hair on top and grown as a beard down to his concave little chest. Each night Mr. Mann comforted himself with a double-sized wine bottle. He liked to talk but had nothing to say, and his forehead was bunched up like lamp shades fashionable in the olden days.

Mr. Mann had things to say, but he was too lonely to organize his thoughts and so just bounced them off you like a fipped-up ping-pong table. Mr. Mann studied something or other, not because he wanted to become that something or other, but because he liked being a student.

At some point, this short man, perhaps early thirties and with a glossy pate, a skilled musician and able scholar, disappeared.

A pupil–a young blue-eyed man in a loose-fitting square-cut T-shirt–of Mr. Mann’s found his way up to the hallway. His blond hair plopped beautifully on his long pale head like a bowl of angel-hair spaghetti. “Do you know where he went?” No one does. The kid looks angry. Maybe he already paid for a bunch of lessons. Or maybe he’s just sick of Mr. Mann’s shit, sick of wanting to learn to play like a man who’s never learned to live. Speculation, pure speculation. The truth is that we don’t know what made that handsome, soft-featured young fellow scowl and pout up his face into some kind of angry ashtray.

Who is Mr. Mann? Why did he come to town? Why did he leave? These questions were scarcely raised. He was there, shuffling with his professorial little wine gut out front, perpetually drunk but never noticeably so. And then he was gone. The whole thing lasted a couple months. The young American exchange student knew the most about him, but no one asked him for the particulars, and in time he would forget most of what he’d learned in their few conversations. To this day, no one from that floor of an old dorm building slated for demolition come summer knows what became of Mr. Mann. I guess he died. Actually, there’s no reason to suppose that. For most 30 year olds living in the glorious West in our prosperous era, twenty years pass amiably enough and death still looms far off in the distance, a worry but still not anything approaching a certainty.

This was Mr. Mann’s chapter. Will he get so much as another sentence?

I don’t want to get old without a cause

I don’t want to get old without a cause

Children of the future,
looking to see further
than we did when we took
our whirl as cute hope.

Give up blank space:

Discarded Verses:

What becomes of a soul
when it’s no longer fresh faced,
a part of the future?

What becomes of a heart
when it’s time to grow up
but it cannot?

What becomes of a mind
that never learned to play
the way it is on the inside?

Where to go now that it’s over
a

A man with no purpose

A man with no purpose

Too lazy even to drink
too bored even to bitch
too done even to remember
what he’d meant to make.

No one cares.
Nobody minds.
He leaves them alone.
It is kind of fun to get big eyes
and lean into a friend, all soft
with concern for the poor guy.

One more day here and there
I’ve quit believing in you
in what you said
It isn’t for me to say
but everybody knows
you’re done
a has been has at least
something to look back upon
something to smile distantly
about when what was’s raised