something from the Orgone Box (of July) (with some spacings between phrases missing, as usual) for May Day :


4

Dr. Neil De Grasse Tyson is laughing
(kneeling in de grass) as he scampers down
a spiraling ramp of time in the renovated
heavens of the Hayden Planetarium (falls

the length of a football field at Victoria,
they say) (the ramp represents 13 billion
years of evolution) plucks a liberal
hair-width from his visitor’s head (cave

drawings to Now only one three-thousandth
of an inch on this walkway) but will
uncork a Chateau Latour 1900 (with a twinkle)
to celebrate the flow of time (south, north. . .)

as the Fidèle glides into St. Louee
with another boatload of Flying Fools
and the gyroscope oscillates between Wolof
Ndar (near the mouth of the Sénégal)

and that clay-clad fur-trading guest
at the mouth of a wild Missouri
(from Great Lakes to the Gulf) (we resume
on a raftered board of information, staggering

from Huck to Jim and back to Finn again)
and one lucky fellow from nearby St. Paul
debarks, he thinks, for Paris in 33 laps
a man in cream-colors sudden as a grinning

griffin doubly doubtful, you know
him best astride that albino fifth mare
riding into the incredible roll-call of the Ram-
rod ironclad hoarse hi-ho silvery clay-borne

moor. . . that sileage mariner or masked
moron who wins the day with a myrrh-bullet
that wounds but does not kill (tolerable well
I think you know him flighty Viking scam-

divine semi-bateau or smorgasbord)
his I.D. was an island donnybrook
for many a gnomon sheared from the corps
legion and foreign to us all, Cappy (Sargasso

is as good as mine, I guess) Swede?
Great Dane? Some serious kid on the lam?
With a side for existence (Bacon’s moll)?
Underneath the stones and ridicule? Deuce

or Jack? Demure, with marked cards on deck?
Dimly lit lying on a bed of ruses
severe (a little irritable devil –sure,
sometimes) still he wore the drastic keds

inside out, sprinting those finnish loins
around about a decade be-shipped at zee
spun back through a dawn-spout (easy)
countertop crisscrosswordwise (like a snail-

shell on a leash) and carrying the clay-
coated Mexicali canopy midnight to Monday
with one hand (an eyesore) One happy demon
parsed with another innocent city-of-lakes

gaudi-looped gondola our double-U
booted sunny dung-beetled scarabified
rosetta-scrolled Popeye-rusted fiber-
optickled ghoul on a bender

sabled and speared first to steal
forth from that gilded Juligan’s chest
of seven myrrh-dropped home-stretched
boxelder cicada shells upon the waters

and dance Babe the Blue Ox or Ruth
amid the corny aliens after a Homer run
(from big J-lie) (to Jubilee-rumor) (by
way of a tricksy prairie bee) to third.

And there through those heraldic bronze
St. Louis Cathedral western gateways
curled like swimming agates
inwards and signifying “monkeys”

my keys, my keys, O Mon through the
intolerable clashing of egos (and Mr. Gell-
Mann’s routine and obnoxious legendary
put-downs) through the seemingly

intractable symmetry-breaking dispersion
of theories and regular Regge poles and
so on on the throne experimenters (sloppily)
jockeying particle accelerators (up to 20 billion

electron-volts) and the cold fusion of wars
of words the privatical pride of little swords
and hoards of awards on family rudders
oared undergound the narrows of old saws

and sorrows of old Noah and all his waves
and drafty spoons in the inward parts
of the country through all the traps
and the satraps the unpropitiated vows

and the brown gods almost forgotten
implacable watching and waiting
there in the curl of two
crossed fiddleheads a target nef:

smaller and smaller in your palm
gleaming softly ruby and green
like a foursquared loop rung
from one ladder-stem and marbled

like the steps of Oz at the gates
of the Emerald City a handy green
houseboat toto in tornado and Grendel-
gloomed hidden and lucky as a stage-

coach for Atahuallpa on the 29th
slate footstep of the following month
(his octopus depth-grammar, submollified
and cupped for a last millwheel

in Cuzco) ah John John the piper’s son
playing his Andean crane bone
wingèd like a fluted nacreous nob
or happy cap of Shakespeare’s dad

a nonsense duo route of many-coated
rainbow ink across a sunny turtle’s back
aloft now Spirit of St. Louis Lucky’s toot
so sweet to Notre Dame decoded

ink incredible bibliothèque of farther queues
for young men should be old explorers, and
clovers, circling prairies of young bees
that’s my Danish nutshell, Socrates


12.31.99