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MONKEY
For
eons I have followed Monkey
and
Monkey has pursued me
and
sometimes we have met and danced
in
metamorphic aerial embraces
or
struggled hair tooth eardrum pore to pore
in
always/never thunderstruck abyss
and
always Monkey won it was his nature
world
of fantasy appearance disappearance
breathing
through his ears inviting everyone
to
join mad escapades in fields of cinnaba
in
palaces of jade in China-Mexico
on
beaches where we met to tell Cortez
there
is a monkey savior
and
gold is not the only substance in existence
filling
him with rum-peyote to admit
his
captains climbed Mt. Popo in their armor
just
to prove that subjects of the King and Christ
could
carry their gravity everywhere
or
that the motive of their conquest
by
starvation cannon cross and sword
was
white man's lust for darkskinned slaves
to
manufacture steelclad teddy bears
on
Toledo assembly lines
for
the children of the courts
who
are everybody's children now who wonder
where
did the day that left the night laughing
at
a choice between the sea and the mountain go?
and
stood watching in Veracruz
while
a big tableau of picaresque characters
with
Monkey as Yama himself
chased
me away from my lover
away
from myself
and
vaporized in New Orleans again and again
vaporized
like termite armies
melting
into salt skin in the night
into
tears into Mind
because
I was chased by Monkey
because
he made me laugh
because
he made everybody laugh
because
his antics struck a note of doom
in
the hearts of those who go to the circus
once
in a decade
because
magnolia scent in Jackson Square
at
midnight made me want to wander
arm-in-arm
through Africa Japan,
Grand
Canyon reading room
with
talking dogs and dreamers
of
Adamic realm
where
no one ever stood before
where
we could sit unbludgeoned
by
the screech and scrape of leaden book
and
gold ataxia the fragments of our Monkey's
dead
cosmology and ask each other one by one
eternal
question: tell me what you've seen
and
let the muco-pus of history's human dread
disease
run freely to the seas and be absolved
in
climbing exercises in the trees
where
we will fast and scratch and Monkey then
will
ask our choice of discipline
like
Drinking Bride's Milk
Gathering
the Yin
Patching
the Yang
or
Rubbing the Navel to Pass Air
but
will these make us immortal?
so
we say so I have asked all other poets
wild
in hands to grasp the world to turn the key
to
Royal Street Wildlife Museum
enter
screaming one long BRREEOOUUGH
from
Monkey's belly
Monkey's
maelstrom whirling inward outward
one
fierce look horrific word that sent me back
to
Africa to Rimbaud's gray-green poet's grave
ennobled
by the tribal plexus city walls
of
bones of saints of blue-black Jesus children
evaporated
in the air of plague
and
vision yet of Monkey riding naked in a car
out
of head out of mind to perfect forest
by
the sea and everybody laughing
deliriously
in tune or not
entering
through nostril ear and eyeball
growing
in the darkness heart of water Capricorn
apotheosis
just to get together in the bus line
maps
of cities needless of the angry
Patagonian
volcanoes
forgetting
that the lens of arts is not yet clean
but
what is clean and what will ever be transparent
but
the eye of GOD?
the
eye itself the source of water heaving
upward
underground in to the billion telephone
sensations
of the skin
like
primer agua in the found of Las Estacas
paradise
the bones and flesh of Toltec time
ground
under here in the earthly reproduction
dreams
of paradisiacal aristocracy
royal
spirit mind imagination ultimate escape
and
holy war relentless radar Monkey
devastation
Heaven system with a wisdom trick
distilled
and learned by cheating at Their game
the
one I go to know with Monkey
flying
over all the words of history
all
the pointless conversations
printed
on the tongue with YES
and
WHY upon this treadmill WHY electric eyes
phantasmagoric
sex of WHY and solid touches
in
the apoplectic nighttime corners WHY
it
isn't over nothing ends and WHY all novelty
is
oblivion and WHY the Aleph in the gutter
up
the street a huge machine wielding a broom
and
WHY relieving winter blood transfusion rising
in
the Colorado plains like egg in mouth?
So
I met you Monkey bowing to the Four Quarters
and
we sat down and we spoke
and
I said I don't want to be President
and
you said I don't want to be Pope
and
we said I don't want to be King
and
the one thousand languages of the world
poured
through our heads
and
the one thousand stories were told
upon
the mountain
and
we watched the boy herding his cows
across
the river in Abyssinia
and
it was not necessary to become
dragons
or hippogriffs anymore
and
we said YES I am that I am.
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