The Outsider (Part VIII)

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V. DUSTY DEATH

Within the trembling deep of the great waters
Within the pregnant expanse of the clouds
Within the shaking of scorched earth
The prisoners and the pilgrims
Torches and staves and labyrinths
Of rocks of summer crowning random ridges
I who destroy am about to die
We who about to die walk to our own funerals
We are little men

Only ashes nothing else up here
Dead ashes and nothing and the tall grass
The grasses dying in among the rocks
Stretching along the mountain’s endless broken back
In the end this ash we did banish
Lying in the tall grass he did not vanish
Face in the sky and hands in the shadows
In the bitter end lying in the grass
The ridge ahead not slowly rising sharply falling
Only here you see the vanishing and kneeling and crawling
When you give up victory you can sleep
Fearless dreams under a million stars
When you give up defeat you can sleep
Except for the shrieking hoarse voices night and day
Everyone leave the room except for you
In the end

And there is nothing
Lots of nothing
But dead ashes
Only ashes
The dust
The cinders in your lungs
The end brushes the ash from his face
Their noontime explosion
Nobody in nobody out
But nothing is like the dead ashes
After the sun is put out between wet fingers
Whup whup whup whup whup whup whup
And yet there are no ashes

What is the first thing you will do in Olympus?
When I go, I am going to piss on it
Those longbeards in their white togas
They say three out of every four men are gods
Walking right by the dead birds in the snow, spiteful
I do not know what is earth and what is heaven
—But when I get there I will piss on it.

What noises up here make one forget
Buzz of stony silence
When is that darkness monster coming back
When is he coming, caked with sulphur
Shining like sleek oily metal
In the hay where lovers tossed
Hot wax and riding crops and ribbons of choking silk
Surprise visit
Medina Masif Jibal
Glockington Stone Creek
Strange

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The Outsider (Part VII)

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The cardinal wails
Trees lose leaves
The swollen rivers
With stones they cry
They ask
Why
Heavenward, her dying on the breeze.
Body at rest
Piercing shade
Near Methymna shores
On her way to Hades
Muori dannato
Muori muori muori

Arl and Lizzie
Slender candles
Gentle masque of twilight
An emerald earring
Green and silver
The garden shrine
Sitting and watching
Cyclamen breeze
Stirring the branches
The voice of resignation
Dove and crow
Muori dannato
Muori muori muori

‘Karts and pin oaks.
Eliot sired me. Mara and Soma
Betrayed me. By Mara I was found
Sitting cross-legged under the hickory tree.
‘One leg is in Hell, and the other
Remains here. Through the years
You slept. You thought yourself a bien-pensant.
Maybe she never knew. Why do you ask?’
‘Over in Glockington.
I learned to suppress
Pain and Fear.
The subjugation of pleasant things.
Our neighbors just neighbors who knew
The middle ground.’
muori

To Stone Creek then she came

Digging digging digging digging
O Unjust Father I defy you
O Unjust Father I defy

digging

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The Outsider (Part VI)

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In the gathering dark, after the fire
And before the Chicken Kiev, when the hands of the clock
Mark the minutes of this walking death,
I Virgil, guide, living blind on the margins,
All used up now by life, by Him forsaken
In the gathering dark, by His Olympian indifference
Laid low, computer solitaire consoling the hours,
The author encased by drywall, stares in the mirror, shaves
His face, and roots for dinner among the cans.
In a closet tenderly packed
The sudden detritus of her life forever frozen,
In cardboard boxes are stored (in sealed plastic bags)
Clothing, photographs, jewelry, and letters.
I Virgil, all used up now by this soupy world
Tired of waiting, and got on my way—
I would go out to meet him.
My friend, ironic and detached, waves,
No sin-eater he, not greeting but beckoning,
One who compels obedience
In his death black suit and blood red tie.
The sun has moved on, as it always does,
He puts down his fork, it was bland and tasteless,
There is but one souvenir
Left to be put away, sweet relic.
Numb and dispassionate, he wrings it free;
A band of gold overcoming the unwilling knuckle;
On his finger now a sunken white band,
The empty gully his new companion.
(And I Virgil drenched in flame
Defied the so-called Master Architect;
Where I sat by the gentle Tecumseh weeping
And began my despairing death.)
Bathes himself in somber fuel,
And strikes the match, dispelling the dark . . .

She wilted and put a hand to her mouth
Disbelief flooding her face as he left;
Unable to stop the cruel looping mantra in her brain:
‘Do not go. I have had strange dreams.’
Grinds her temple with her fingers,
‘Not to me, O Lord, not to me’ it was said
In the misty rain of Lu Mountain, in the River Che.
(Curses the gathering darkness before her eyes.)
O Death death, I see nothing special
Within these four walls on West Pierce Street,
The emptiness of an open fist
And a table cloth and a bowl shattering on the floor
Hot sticky soup everywhere: where haughty Death
Insists to take with his bony touch
The life I have never loved so much.

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The Outsider (Part V)

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III. THE STARS WOULD BE SHINING

The burnt sand is crushed: the brittle hood of brush
Pestled and ground into the watery silt. The earth
Surrenders to the foot, splashing. Come, sweet Thalia.
Gentle Tecumseh, wait quietly, until at last I return.
The starlight here is far too brazen, not so the flowers,
The carpet of grass, the modest vesper, your graceful step
Into the veiled hush of our twilight. Come, sweet Thalia.
I overlook the city, the sac à fiens of liberation;
On this foul box I offer to take nothing…
Gentle Tecumseh, wait quietly til I get back,
Gentle Tecumseh, wait quietly til I put down my pack.
Free from the twitching pincers of the beast
I murder conviction, and shield my eyes from the East.

The bus rolled slowly through our town
Trawling for trollops with benjamins for bait
Only to disappear through the hedge of mist
Before the black sunshine corrupted the pewter sky
Ransoming our bones now twice sold
And settling all old business in the Forum of the Doomed.
The perished ones made animate they march again
On the grass where blood was never spill’d but flood’d,
On the scaffold held court the Dead One, exterminating son.
How could I look on his works and not fear
The mantle of the avenging wraith he assumed, yet I only
See the depraved, exulted pimp of the Sex Trolley.
O (prime numbers) there’s one two three five seven
Eleven thirteen seventeen
Whores on the yellow bus
Èprise du plaisir jusqu’à l’atrocité.

Harder harder harder
Click click click click click click
Who is that?
Oh snap

Wayfarin Rats
Under the scorched earth of spinning ghosts
Mr. Principal, the old gas ball
Aflame, a seven-page letter in his pocket
Cf. ass-clown: briefcase in hand,
He gave me stereo instructions for the soul,
I got him in at the Head Cracker Café.
I am the drum that brings bad spirits.

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The Outsider (Part IV)

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‘What is that bell?’
It ought to be for you.
‘Why do they keep ringing it? When will they stop?’
Like you care.
‘I’ve
‘Heard it before. I should have gone with them. I was
‘The only one left.’
Your tongue
Is lethal but your sword is quiet.
‘The bag in front of you is as big as the one behind me. But I won’t give in.’
Break
One-one do you copy four-two-four-zero-zero—
Your hometown
It’s not like this
‘What do you want from me? What do you want?
‘I never claimed Spinoza’s Stone, I always did
‘What I was told, always. Is this not the case?
‘Can you disagree with me?’
Sasha sugi, he says.
Your path is set, I see you shall not waver.
But be warned I shall bring the pain
Should you posture and tarnish your shield further.

When Hagar’s husband got snuffed, I thought—
I’m not making this up, seriously I thought this,
WE ARE THE DEAD
We’re hiding under the porch, shh baby don’t look don’t look.
Now you won’t have to worry if he’ll find out
About you and me. His Havanas, I gave them to Bobby.
T had me in his den, Hagar, and he bragged about them,
He said, you know, they’re finer than she is.
And sweeter-tasting, he said, so I hid them in my jacket.
I kept them for five months, but I don’t smoke, see.
We’re going to die, she said. Looks like it, I said.
Then get on top of me, she said, and let’s get to it.
WE ARE THE DEAD
You don’t get to choose, just grab one.
Take your receipt and step out of the way.
And if you run out, you have only yourself to blame.
You’ve had time to prepare, I said, you knew this was coming.
(For fifteen years no less.)
I see him, she said, turning the spotlight,
He’s got something in his hand, like he’s on fire, she said,
(He keeps getting hit, but he doesn’t go down.)
The lawyer didn’t want me out here, but I’d never seen a NBK.
You’re a terrifying metsunge, I thought.
My, if I met your efficient cause, I’d just die, I thought,
Where your red kalki at Superbeast?
WE ARE THE DEAD
Dang, the rain that’s coming down, he never saw the like,
As he put the cross on his head, not the crown that others—
WE ARE THE DEAD
WE ARE THE DEAD
Dive false tongue. Dive wasp. Dive candle-waster. Dive.
I’ll be waiting. Dive. Dive.
Dive down, men, dive down, ladies, dive down, dive down.

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The Outsider (Part III)

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II. BRING THE PAIN

The wagon they rode in, these indifferent children of the earth,
Made rough love to the road, whereas its crew,
Bound to each other with unabdicated ecstasies and unconsidered dreams
Behind which a golden veau slouches in their six
(If you don’t have a shield, you better ax somebody!)
Their Night impaled by oncoming halogen eyes
Freely flashing the teeming masses’ yearnings as
Instamatic enlightenment scorched from within,
Their silken dalliance undone from their suitcases;
Thoughts of hops and stolen pickaxes
Undaunted, laughing in the face of their strange nameless tagalongs, summoning
Commodus, Didius Julianus, and Elagabalus—cheating, dumb-lucky
And perverse in aspect; vitriol riding the waves
Across the deading border, they gathered
To witness a Very Special Episode,
Hailstones breaking the surface of the fountain’s waters
Pitting the sides of the silver bowl.
A squamous vest variegated with threads
Brilliant green and purple, gilded buttons to hold the man,
This eidolon of Hermes in reverse.
Above the question mark of his existence one found
The beam of Father’s scales still teetering
But destined to come down on his side as surely
As they did for Homer’s Patty; within this dark wood
Lay that which should not be roused
From slumbering tomb, while all he really sought
Was his ultimate Broadway.
Sapphic boredom met the bloody slaughterbench
Of Cambodian history; lecherous Chircharogne
Swallowing fire, wailing, argumentum ad misericordiam.
The wolf is at the door.
Going to emergency, going to jail, cry out
For the approaching sirens
Passing you by, making you die.

‘You’ve been spared a second time. Yes, spared. Wear the mask.
‘Go along. Was it really so bad? Be honest.
‘Are you afraid to look? To compare? Yes?
‘I think you’re just fine. Liar.’

The dusty earth shall run with blood
Long after we come over them with our will.

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The Outsider (Part II)

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Witchy Thomas, Cassandra of renown,
Tried to warn them, but
She never revealed her Arts and Sciences,
Or her seven sisters. Look, she mumbled,
Here one comes, my starry-robed sister with the globe and compasses,
(Who is that strange whitebeard at her side? Goo!)
Here is Mathilda, long-fingered and wise,
A multiplying ray bursting from her forehead.
Here is the girl with the crown of stars, the girl with the scalpel and pens,
And here is the gal with the cloak and shield, and this one,
Her hair in elaborate rolls, holds a serpent and carries a wax tablet,
And secrets a fishhook. I do not see
My sister Harmonia. Innocence is drowned.
No one can close this door, nor darken this shining path.
There you have it. She met Grahame too late,
Else things may have turned out differently:
So can say history’s fortunate few.

Strange and piercing dream,
Through the time that passes his life,
Sinners in the hands of an angry musician, he said,
He will make wide slaughter in this land.
Still, we reasoned, one is not more than one,
And so ignored this soggy lobby greeter.
Carried our hero on our shoulders around the gazebo,
Where the Ragbags exchanged their vows,
With joy-soaked oblivion of the approaching storm.
I bumped into an old friend, shook him and yelled ‘Boonie!
‘Remember me from Al-Rabiah?
‘That guy we knew who put out his eyes with the golden broach,
‘Did you keep in touch with him? How’s his family?
‘Too bad he missed this spectacle!
‘His anarchic principles, which I found most illogical,
‘Would have been no match for our community spirit!
‘Damn skippy! va prier contre l’orage,–va prier!’

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