CANTO 39 Hydrogen sulfide

 

Hydrogen sulfide rumbles.

The noble skull leaks distraction: green vinyl

floor inspected by M 3-J-J8b is awash with

undone errands, tisks and tasks:

peeling paint, leaking pipe,

ailing engine, weed-choked broccoli.

The enterprise:

someone in the shell of a

white liberal male academic handy-person poet

shall tuck a typewriter (it can be a word-processor)

under one arm and a tradition

under the other (it can be Tibetan Buddhism)

and forge out of sitting meditation

a syncretic (it can be sink-erratic) wayward

and rambling autobio-text-with-graphic

anti-heroic ironic epic mystical ouvre

in post-Wordsworth or wordsWoolworth

sometimes dimestore cadences

with total freedom to juxtapose disparate

fragments or threads to variously

ply and assault (it can insult) both the heights

and editors without defining an audience or even dimly

reflecting good creative writing practice (it can).

The program: Suspended Sphere of Skull.

Sitter evacuates framed mind

all argon mantra.

Concentration forming beam

shatters mind imploding

awareness fusion radiates bliss

Pure Land of Open Energy

Widening Tide Awakening.

What actually happens:

Sunspots monitor historic clashes of will.

X-rays penetrate the tent

and stimulate a carpenter ant so tungsten pincers

sink into my inaudible thigh.

I fling the critter end-over-end to a far corner

where it sits sorting things out.

Gossamer threads wired to my eardrums

tintinnabulate chipmunk chatter.

Skull thrums with a dog’s yelps

and the neighbor shouting "Shudddup!" "Shudddup!" "Shudddup!"