Being Mice


    1

in the middle of the music   (meaning

                                        this little patch of time I
                                            happen to pass by in

               Imagine a space vehicle         manned by Name Alone

I have forgotten the number they gave me
and now my name becomes vague to me

I try to catch it as it passes
in a costly limousine

The clothes I wear won't give me away --
the voices I muster to speak to the master . . .

     2

                 These people are cats
at the door    all    summer
                                    seeking
status      among the       other
cats that
              LIVE here      cats that
know   that         they belong

                                     and the evening
sky's     hay colored     light
glowed   in the sheep's coat

     3

In a party of friend's and acquaintances
suddenly a small
cat comes
close to me and
starts to speak.

It says that I
have been mistaken

about its nature.

Of course cats speak. 

I try to tell everyone
but obstructions
block our conversation.

            u

A long necked cat accuses me.

There is scratching and cat meowls
of a violent and distressing king:

cats attacking human throats!

I am a Cat Killer
and one of the worst!

(People will know I am crazy
but there's no escape
from cats'
howling, scratching
and speaking in terrible whispers
                                                     all night
                                                                  everywhere

4

The sound "ite" as in "bite"
now.

Bite now.

u
I threw the black crow claw away, hating evil --
not even wanting
to possess the tainted object

And therefore request
a settlement regarding
the lexical item "BEYOND" viz:

       That posit that acts as a gland
       to secrete our secrets.

               "Beyond the nature of the giraffe
                 a beast with just that nature
                 lopes towards sundown."

               "Beyond the causes that conspired to bring us here
                 a living monument to its own exclusion
                 flames at the heart of the day."

And no boat exists

          to skim the quiet harbor surface long enough

                  to skim the quiet harbor surface long enough

                                                                   I have good teeth.

                                                                   They shine like mice.

Giant Noises

                               hide in the Toad's Sky

                                                          5

                                                        That
                                                        dog
                                                        is
                                                        at
                                                        least
                                                        one
                                                        half not
                                                        dog

                                                          6

                                                        That
                                                        Ape
                                                        men thought
                                                        to talk
                                                        sign talk to

                                                        thought him-
                                                        self a
                                                        man to
                                                        talk to

    7

The cat at the top of the stairs has
a serious look in his loungey eyes as
I climb the stairs and confute him.

    8

My hat had vanished.

When that cat that
sat up looked straight at it,

that hat had had it.

    9

Moments of mind reflected in moments of language
scorching white paper --

"The Language of Lights"
and the world.

(Your reading so massive and curious--

               white doves spring from your hands)

And did I detect a tremor in the voice of the wise one who whispered:

                                     "It does not die"? 

The dark halls
pure as space

horses

               marching across Paradise

and the marks left by their hooves in the muddy turf
were "read" by the sages of that area

       And we stood by
       and we ciphered
       and we watched the vivid creatures
       cross and cross again

and our pleasures passed     into the manifest universe

    10

I wanted to attempt
                                "fresh textualities"
                                                               even to let got
long enough to arouse
the flaming letters
along the perforations
wearing clothes of the wrong sex
being a tiger
in one penetration and being
mice
        later
                skating across the balcony
first I was just you
                               walking
              backwards
                                   somewhere

     very hot. The city of Corinth does not
exist exactly. Nor Thebes. Blank trees
in the areas designated by those names these days.

It was impossible to retain the use of the car.

I was ill until fresh passengers relieved discourse.

The place I retain in your heart is small consolation
for the loss of essential services.

The margins of our thought had just been shifted
that much further onward towards oblivion . . .  

    11

                   "The Cat Forgives Its Phenomena"

The light goes off
                             but the cart remains.

I lose
          my place
                          in my mind
                                              and a light goes on

          at the edge of the botched mentation
          such that          at last        I can see
                                                                  straight
                               into the world:

                                    Sunlight
                                    shining
                                    on water

                                    people swimming in the pond

          Savage Beetles sail Across The Dunes

     12

All the things that cross the mind -- don't think of these.

And all the things we feel and wish to do
even in a few moments from now
after this brief exercise has come
to its allotted terminus
and the world goes on --

And all the associative links we know --

don't link them now.

That mind I own
deep in the sockets of the skull bones --
the thoughts that think themselves
running amok in those sockets

trying to shake loose of the effort
to achieve a paramount stance --

an exercise so intimate and obtuse
to the local chatter that
it rides on Nothingness alone!

                                (thinking the mind

                                                   is not the mind

                                                                      but somebody else . . .

    13

An Ideal Object

produced before

the world.

A look

coming out of a head

and a bird

shooting across space

interrupting that look --

(An entire life    has just gone by)

In front of a large audience

the magician does

a truly impossible

thing:

He produces an Ideal Object

before the world.

    14

Does logic
compel
the thought it owns?

No.

We
compel
each thought.

And who are we?

Since

the world

began.

                                  15

                          And now The Vessels break
                          and ruby juices splash on the tiles.
                          A crowd with tapers makes the midnight crossing.

                          The giantess and her consort, stashed beneath bed rock,
                          trying to become an obstacle ignored till now.

    16

I am taken
for the power
I desire

                     (people think I'm real.

             I am not real.

             I stand on the roof.

I vanish.

I see
         the sleeves
                            of my selves
                                                  grow dim on the plane.

    17

An old hotel
my house had been
I happen to be
living in
               on
the banks
of what used to be
a river . . . 

This piece of paper

goes on forever . . .