(Copyright 2021)
Febuary 7, 2023
For the full poem, click here.
Excerpt 007:
knowing the past was dead
I walked out of the house of melting shadows
I bathed in clear water
I sat down by an old stream and waited for the fish to speak
I sat inside a reflection of lunar decay for thirty incarnations
and nothing happened
I walked out of the house of melting shadows
not a closed night or a fearful night or a weeping night or a
money night or a political night or an atomic night
the herds of stars are breaking out of their corral
I’m sitting at a cafe
on the beach in Cardiff
blue January afternoon
my mind unwrinkles
the restaurant’s empty
a huge whitewashed gull with a red beak
stands on a rock a few feet away
he waits, he looks
mouthless cash/samurai governments in twinkling skyscrapers
I try on soft hats in a phantasmagorical haberdasher on 5th Avenue
in a jar the size of Des Moines I pickle brains of ancient Sinatras
sand in the engine, empty canteens, thirsty in the desert, I climb the
next set of dunes and stagger down into a level-B resort, artificial
lake restaurants women in bikinis fat men children sliding into blue
pools waiters delivering drinks, robot Adam&Eve standing under a
palm tree eating a bowl of fruit, Machine God sitting at a huge
poolside table with a few cronies, he waves me over, the sun sets and
the moon comes up, I watch old skulls of mob defectors rolling like
tumbleweed in the desert….
hollow planets ring like gongs, shepherds bring in their animals,
ghosts in the arbor pick the grapes and feel the warm wind, we’re
walking through a forest, the yellow-horned flowers are weeping
with fog, chrome-edged clouds are dropping sheets of loneliness
the universe said goodbye
the universe was going away
there was no JFK assassination
it was a mirage in Texas
Allen Dulles was sitting in the back of the limo
his brains were splashed all over an unknown woman
she was fighting to breathe and squirming
she was wearing a little pillbox hat and a polkadot dress
she jumped out of the car and ran up the street
and no one ever saw her again
the Virgin Mary
the Virgin Mary of Texas
the lilies of the valley are growing in the back yard again
splashed in the Buick majesty of steady spring rain
and the snow is gone
the branches of crystalline ice are giving out little green buds
and worms are crawling in the mud around the porch sniffing roses
Caravaggio talks to Raphael and Raphael talks to Piero and a leg
takes shape
Michelangelo talks to Titian and half a face emerges
Durer talks to Velasquez and Goya walks out of a cave ready to go to
work
we return to the Bronx and visit my grandmother sitting in her
pudding chair in the middle of the living room, she slowly moves her
head and trembles and mumbles something in Yiddish and I kiss her
on the cheek, the mirror sits on the heavy bureau above candles
flickering for the dead in the middle of the afternoon, someone is
always dying, they were dying in Russia and they are dying in the
Bronx, there was a daughter who died a few weeks after she was
born and my grandfather died when I was three, and the candy store
across the street died when bubble gum was outlawed during WW2,
and my father’s father is dead, he owned a clothing store and his
partner ran off with the cash and now the partner is dead too, and the
books on the shelves in my grandmother’s house are dead, and the
plates behind glass are dead, the forks and knives and spoons are
dead, the rugs in the living room are dead, and my father’s mother
will soon be dead in the dining room on the floor at our house late in
the afternoon in January, but no one is supposed to make a move to
stop the dying in the way the dying is happening, we are all
supposed to stand by, centurions at a gateless city, the rivers shallow
and frozen, kiss your grandmother, stand back, smile, go over to the
table, sit down, play cards, eat honey cake, listen, listen, listen
Hermes is circling the brick house and tearing tiles off the roof, he’s
coming down into the living room and breaking into the glass cases
and stealing the silverware, he’s crawling under the piano and
ripping out the pedals, he’s moving the laundry room between the
living room and the kitchen, he’s going next door to the psychiatrist’s
house and laying down the names of 297 mental disorders that will
be invented out of wholecloth in the next 50 years
I’m lying back in a leather chair in Grand Central Station and an old
man is cutting my hair
he puts a hot white towel on my face
I enter St. Pat’s, it’s a huge bookie joint, crowds standing in the
aisles, betting on anti-Lucifer
I take a seat at the end of a long pew and fold my hands in prayer to
Piero della Francesca, silver painter of Solomon & Sheba
and Henry Miller of the Rosy Crucifixion and Kenneth Patchen in
his bed of pain and Gregory Corso roaming the streets of Rotterdam
blessings of wine and bread and skeletons growing new flesh and
father Walt sitting in the middle of Times Square his voice a violet
thunder
the President is on television and the Pope is drunk on ceremonial
wine cursing the Church fathers as he floats naked near the Sistine
ceiling
O dream garden of the ancient flower…
/END
(Episode 35 of Rappoport Podcasts—“Organic Meat and Vaccines; Government rules; Culling herds; Corruption of the food supply; Nanoparticles in meat; Smoking guns”—is now posted on my substack. It’s a blockbuster. To listen, click here. To learn more about This Episode of Rappoport Podcasts, click here.)
Jon Rappoport