EVIL DWELLS IN THE SOUL OF AMBITION
    THE BEAST KNOWS THE HOPELESSNESS OF GRANDEUR
      TO MATE AND GRAZE AND SLEEP WITHOUT FEAR
     

VISITORS

The Piccadilly Line to Leicester Square,
I said, and then change for the Northern Line,
But make sure it is the Edgware Branch,
Get off in Hampstead, I’ll be waiting outside,
Old, bald, worn, your classmate from grade school,
Our old parochial school on Long Island,
Many lives ago, when we still believed
In the transubstantiation, and thought ourselves
Quite cool souls migrating through the universe.

My flung careful few, steady bells at the pleat ends of the operating skirt our carburettori have draped over the planet, napkin framed around the unformed fontanelle of now, the soon-to-be-cicatricose present, for which, as the price goes up, many will be sacrificed: now, as the willow is in first bud like a giant whip of green pearls in a chthonic fist, and in the wind the metasequoia roars as if on fire, now they approach with scalpel and spoon, our polity lies on the metal tray in a pool of noxious black liquor, the semen of men fed on anthracite.

Fifty years ago
Leroi Jones
Wrote a poem

born September 14, 1879

for Roberto Valenza

They keep telling me to write a poem for you.
No, my friend Ted keeps telling me.
Since he also knew you.
But knows I knew you a lot better.
I don’t wanna write a poem for you!
I want you here: alive, kicking, talking to me.
Instead you’re doing the bardos business.
Transmigration and all that jazz. Fuck.
Going somewhere groovy, are you?
With cosmic ‘li-baries’ and such.
What a pronunciation joy you were.
You winked at me to acknowledge that
when you read at the Ruigoord poetry festival.
As for going places, Ted went to the Treehouse
the other night to recite a couple of your poems.
Respect, baby, for the goddamn dearly departed.
But okay, I ‘forgive you’ for splitting the scene,
flying away to do your own eternal number.
You beautiful Buddhist bum, you.
Yeah, and Yuyu Ramdass Sharma,
the literary face of Kathmandu today,
has posted a memoriam on Facebook
for the prince of Kathmandu yesterday.

The night is cold and there is a line of fifty, then sixty people waiting with their things in baskets in the checkout line, it is a large market but only the one line is open on a Saturday night and the line has stopped moving because at the head of it a woman has disputed the total the checkout clerk has charged her for her grocery things, the amount of money in dispute is inconsequential but the dispute continues, the clerk calls on a phone for a supervisor but no supervisor arrives, the arguing goes on, the people in line are fidgeting but no one says a thing, the dispute continues, the clerk continues to argue with the woman and to make calls but help does not arrive, one then two then three security guards arrive then leave again, the line grows longer, the clerk is trying to control her agitation but now the people in the line are growing visibly restive, some are leaving the line, fuming, muttering to themselves, one man says Enough of this and leaves his cart full of groceries where it stands and walks off, mumbling to himself, saying just loud enough to be heard the name of a much more expensive gourmet market a few blocks away, I don't care what it costs he says