Merrily Goin' Round, Part 1

1.

of New Mexico

he saw it all in the weeds 

on the side of the road

chant chant exposing rhythm

height of going round

round

through this common day

speeding

on Crispin fela, would go back 

to that Yellow Britches Creek

that Gitchy Goomy, that started it all

It was a dream that we were ever alive

the pressure

the road

the cycles

the out of order

blast and flare!

drifting down

in the dark

speck of blue floating in a sea of black

Jack’s life

bouy, bouncing

spun to whole

Jack hiked up his pants

His soul

comin’ by in revolution

slow and speeding to perihelion

gone

into stars

we liked the idea of golden 


2.
future
anyhow, even if just an image
to compare
to the sun each day
Jack had plans to paint up into 

Maine and Nova Scotia
he remembered Paul’s horses he painted 
in a simple scene on his way 
back from Fairfield’s island
 someone else’s world 

but it was a good visit
he was in love with the earth and the 
falling ice backwards in slow motion 
was particularly poignant
It was sad 

we were so very protective 
and ambitious
we could talk about that
a kind of violence
of wild bulls

Achlles hoped he wasn’t that man 
over the hill
that was dead, 
and didn’t know it.
Whose food was cold 

Whose wine was-- 
Numb, he pared away to 
essential minimum
and repetition, 
it’s own memorial

3.
he was reading 
of the shaman skipping 
and jumping across vast spaces
to Siberia and back
over the positive and negative 

magic of pottery shard
labyrinthine maze of life it mirrored
spinning mandalla
You have no use for.
This, is, where, the, serpent, lives.

In the constellation turning above 
in the dizzying moment 
of thought turning
in the green orange purpling
to dark

Vermont was green hills and 
black eyed susans bobbing
Jack saw Alex everywhere
the black tumbling water
Crispin would describe it 

in a similar language
he was from the same place
and interior wood
Jack wanted to wed it all to 
Iowa to California

to Aspen and Vermont 
to far north
Jack had hoped to glimpse 
that Northern Light 
and green sea, 


4.
in the Far South, the Sun
snaking
polar inkindlings
of the snow and Ice
This land, my land

from Ca--li--for---nia, to
New YOK HarboR
Crispin HaT
It was from the Amish 
country he grew up in and then 

he remembered William Penn, one 
could drive a car around in the brim and
in those paintings 
at the Capital, as a kid
and Walt Whitman 

brought it all 
back and so Cub-scout 
Crispin pinned it on top
and held it up with suspenders,
and attached it all

to the uniform of  

SoHo art Capital too-- he had been 
a part of
in Converse sneakers
and black t-shirt, 

like Jean Michele writing 
on the walls
and Keith drew dancing figures
all black and white
the snake withered