Never Mind the Beasts

I am writing a sequence to finish Wonderland.

Here are a few sections (still rough). The formating is all left justified on blogger so the spatial concerns are all off. Some of this last section of Wonderland was written in Korea but most is happening right now looking back at the manuscript and its concerns.

It may change a lot over the next while. A lot more will be added. This is just day two.

Something is pulling me. Which feels good. Very good.

(August 1st 2006)

1. HERMIT KINGDON

two bags to my name
a twitchy eye
and sour stomach

couldn’t take the silence, couldn’t take the red paste, couldn’t take the crowds, couldn’t take couldn’t take the

block buildings &
ants and ants and ants

moving over
verve and sense

left all my books
left my false
love and my
false smile

left left
always leaving

narrowing down

my life

getting
the skinny

no room
for the gaunt
and unladen
and extremely
sick

fog rolling
over stanzas
and false cities

leaving behind Korea for Poland
for no earthly reason

not dispossessed
of judgement
but starting out
for another kingdom

2. HOPE

here on this earth
with a bucket under
my arm by the wobly splendor
of some distant sea
I count the opposites
of “is” and “was”
and come out astonished
between the element
of flesh
and the element
of hope

moving out of
moving out of help

ironing out my irony

draw close and close
the curtains
and knuckle down
here inside this other
monstrance

torments of robes and sculptured rays
useless to the busy hands of the living

high bridge of la dolce vita
and the shadow planets
of Rahu and Ketu
tug at my tired heels

metamorphosis is the heart
of my life and freedom
is a war without a victory
hope is the thorny tale
of the dragon

3. HERMIT KINGDOM

my name
on two bags

my name on
the apples

at the close of day
when straigtening up
and girlded with
lightening

in the book of diminishing
my existence was not
exasperated
by such a sudden clash
of foreign tongues
nor was the forbidden
shortened or shot-through
in the dimunitive or sensitive
language of the Post-Romantic
chased from the temple
of the Avant-Garde

traveling hermit
seeks muse
in the Post-Modern
world and finds
a heart in magic cellulite

4. SCRAPS

pieces
here and there
forked
out on the road
behind me and I
kept my nose to
the ridiculous
in the low husky
voice of the morning

the shadow planets
PULL
&
it is not enough
to keep watch

fire breathing camels
in the rolling
dusty hills
of Southern Utah
and Ulster Union
streets with elaborate
murals and stumbling
Buckfast friends

Circus Circus with Steve and Gary Batson:

all u can eat
and then slip out the back door

Rancho High School:

running through
North Las Vegas
for cross-country
practice

the pattern has not yet emerged
in a key repetition of phases

a lost accent is still an accent
a lost place is always a lost place