… On Friday, as I walked down 2nd Avenue in the rain coming back from the gym—after some laps in the pool (my crawl is getting better, less pain in the muscles in my left arm each time I move), holding on to a rusty … Read More →
Category Archives: Archive
Fucking
I am putting part V of Fucking on my blog today because it is Janis Joplin’s birthday and I wrote it for her. She would be 70. Her death affected me a lot; although she could shout and scream, she was also a flower that … Read More →
Sonnets 1 to 5
1 Looking at the springs, sitting in the sun Something at my nape begins to tickle Like the wind’s moving a hair there, fickle On my bare neck between the scalp and trunk. I’m reading the poet Bill Kushner—Ah! His April Poems are wonderful to … Read More →
If I Told Him: A Complete Portrait of Picasso
I wanted to make a video poem out of the Caedmon recording of Gertrude Stein reciting If I Told Him. In late May, shortly before it closed, I saw the Stein show at the Met and filmed some of it. You weren’t supposed to film … Read More →
The Waste Land
….. I bought the Collected Works of T.S. Eliot (1909-1935) at a used bookstore in Philadelphia in 1969. I’d just flunked out of Temple University, something almost impossible to do, but I’d managed to do it, got a job as an office boy for an … Read More →
A Few Swimmers Appear
… Apparent rari nantes in gurgite vasto. A few swimmers appear in a huge whirlpool. —Vergil … … sleep vanishes When sleep vanishes then you swim. Awake is no island merely swift stroke and breath. The moon is not the sun’s skull day is not … Read More →
At the Duchamp Exhibit
Visited Philly over the weekend (a foggy Friday with tolling bells & a sunny brisk Saturday) and had wonderful walks through the Old City & out the parkway to the art museum where I recited (on the steps) a poem I wrote there in 1973 … Read More →
windskin for Yoko Ono
I loved Yoko Ono before John Lennon did. I read about her in the school library in 1965 in a Time magazine waiting for the elementary school bus to take me home (I lived way out the woods and though in high school the bus … Read More →
The Monkey at 9th And C
I’m not exactly sure when the monkey appeared on my apartment building’s wall. I look at it every day when I’m coming and going. No one has desecrated it just like Chico’s rattlesnake spray-painted on the sidewalk a block away. People walk by it but … Read More →
Taking Down the Wreath
Light several candles and notice that each candle’s flame is different, like individuals, all flame but none the same. All we can do is flicker and whatever fears and doubts we carry cannot stop us, but merely go along, as we offer the light we … Read More →
The Snake on the Sidewalk (and other snakes as well)
Chico, a graffiti artist on the Lower East Side, recently graced the sidewalk with a rattlesnake. It’s such a friendly looking snake I don’t feel dread or danger walking over it. “Will it bite me?” is a question someone with a guilty conscience would ask. … Read More →
Peace on Earth
Saint Jerome’s translation of the Gospel of Saint Luke, Chapter 2, verse 14 is a direct translation from the original Greek: Gloria in altissimus Deo et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis, Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to men of … Read More →