Home before Dark, Part 1

1.

it was late

the yellowing sky, scattering 

slate of cloud

snow whipping at the very height

jangling diamonded light 

and credence of snowman, joined--

and blank returning.

jumble and skip

the same bare place

Stars behind, 

Stars aheaD.

continuing, snaking, New Poem.

I did what I could do, they 

were all left locked up in the barn.

I had to make my way 

forward 

before i lost my way

the snow was deep and the pipes 

were frozen,

the tracks were soon covered over,

the shadows blue lenghtened 

into stripes across the way.

Blue stripes.

the light turned

a vertical thrust towards knowing

repeating enlarging idea

even here in the cold there 

was a numbing naturalism.

he was reading the book

the cracking made them turn,

falling from


2.
creating the language
blank in the reeds
the paintings were piled high 
against the sky 
He drew the little drawing.

It seemed a competing image 
to the one in front of him.
He could compound it in his mind,
the earth was being destroyed 
it’s order  

Beauty we were guided by
 lost and why it was 
Being destroyed.
Henry and company were Burgers 
watching on, silent going about their 

lost way, 
they were part of the Hollow men, 
some one had pointed out this 
direction before. 
There was a book, 

about Modern Men
and a War
This little picture 
this PaintinG might not do.
repeating, 

the pontification-
the dunce hat
the soap box
Jack looked for the reality 
before this mess 

3.

for the reality from this chaos

from this dump of old words 

and goings on the NEW 

WOrlD, worleD, twirled

flying rushing thoughts

It’s ThE EartH, StupiD!

turned round upon itself

turn, turn, turn

Sometimes Jack liked to paint

the scene in front of him.

Sometimes Achilles like to remember 

the scene, and simplify 

the arrangement 

things in the Imagination,

Crispin thought there should 

remain some reverence 

he, Jack, Henry, and the Company

had all--

struggled beyond, some failed at this

The Henry’s were struggling 

behind, 

Jack meant,

how could that foolin around 

out there 

get us any where?

well, Crispin was way beyond 

A job-- there was none for Achilles

He would write his nonsense trying to

spin it Rumpilstiltskin like into goldlike, 

sense but 

not the green cash 

4.
you have in mind
you had forgotten the real gold 
in this metaphor,
a meta beyond,
and you dont believe in beyond,

the doubling otherness of every idea 
in heaven of our thoughts
Heaven is ok 
if just here in my mind 
under my mountain.

Just dont make any promises
of revelation 
of apocalyspe of another’s promise 
fulfilled
This text is all you have.

Going on.
“If I should get there-”
Dr Kings promise 
I think maybe, or well I wish.
we had some rhetoric as that, 

to fire us up,
VarroooM!
A SonG, a narrative type road song
telling us some story! of--
quickly narrowing-- 

to dirt-- and repetition.
less and less, but
road curve in great space,
to oranging sky
SihouetteS

Home before Dark, Part 2

5.

and rope swinging--

rather a hope of a second 

life, a new 

beginning, 

another ten years.

Well, that was a real gift 

as those ten years were a 

second chance

now Jack needed a Third.

That’s it, The Trilogy!

he’d find it here, in the story line 

developing by the poke weed 

by the fence post,

 in the milk weed

the ole weed, around in the 

cycle, through a Sublime 

MomenT, in the Sun

just the thought-- is sublime in itself

and dies

as our saving-- 

self

in the sunset promising 

at the very least 

tomorrow but then Jack 

had this poem to take along and 

increase that chance of any hope,

Save Yourself!

back to the dream and 

lowly beginnings

the leaves
were blowing in the shopping malls  

6.

and corporate headquarters

and here I am in Kansas, damn!

100' on the 4th

I have to get this right

each revolution 

had to increase, Jack felt 

he was spinning, 

not just his wheels and 

he liked the spinning idea 

of the earth and the spinning 

of everything else along-

I’m driving 285 

south from Denver

this Hero is going his own way--

that town, that city, that urban affair

 hid what he came here to see 

that diamonded 

clank changing chance 

crop fragmenting--

big idea! dying 

before it has any chance to be
TruE
They thought they needed more
  guns, Jack wrote on
his horse sauntering

 in the whithering sage,
naked on that horse 
with an older god
out there
he felt he was the very earth 

7.
spinning, 
floating in his oasis 
of thought, Jack thought, 
“ I am it, it is I.”
Achilles took it apart and 

Crispin was wanting 
to put it back together
figuring out 
what it might mean 
realizing as he wrote it meant just 

this, and why Jack kept on
It was good just going 
to the hardware store 
the mountain clarity and 
snow on peak, blowing

he remembered the prayer flags 
though he had disregarded 
the warning of bad luck
Jack was the hilarious fella.
extreme in the page.

a little poof, or puff--
Prophetic intention.
Looking back on his City
his Bridge
talking about the weather

the prophesy 
Crispin kept to himself though
you might overhear him
out on the edge of the Village.

The real Apocalypse
is no Apocalypse--

8.
it was the same whimpering...
it was the same dirty water thrown 
in ones face 
the Walmart aesthetic,
all colored plastic 

for their pleasure and Jack--
Well, the trailors and tumble weed
trash decorating
same disappointment 
Achilles wailed, Why? is it yet unfound--

The Earth creating itself, 
we all, in the stars revolving
City and Country disappeared
The sunset painting into violet
color and MilKy Way

into Sunrise
the cycles circles
and Universe and
moments between
the black 

and the white
circling
all passing, revolving
here again
in the stars

Jack stood there in disbelief 
Achilles looked at the towers
Crispin looked at the Aspens
They were jumping out of the building 
“They looked like birds on fire”

9.
It seemed to go on, 
We with our plans
A part of the NY psyche, 
Jack felt he was now with 
out

never would be part again
to have
to be without
Jack was out there
painting the mountain

a sacred place 
to the Indians
everything smelled like burnt brakes
we stood on the Bridge
 trying to remember

it was beyond us 
and Jack’s cheek was 
wet, this, this real tragedy 
pale beside the thought of 
Achilles rage through Time and --

The bowl, world of indian design was 
of some solace, 
the kill hole entry 
to another dimension.
We see ourselves now from space 

that lonely planet in the stars’
spinning round
the images that make ourselves 
fill our selves, 
our souls, said a different way.

Home before Dark, Part 3

9.
It seemed to go on, 
We with our plans
A part of the NY psyche, 
Jack felt he was now with 
out

never would be part again
to have
to be without
Jack was out there
painting the mountain

a sacred place 
to the Indians
everything smelled like burnt brakes
we stood on the Bridge
 trying to remember

it was beyond us 
and Jack’s cheek was 
wet, this, this real tragedy 
pale beside the thought of 
Achilles rage through Time and --

The bowl, world of indian design was 
of some solace, 
the kill hole entry 
to another dimension.
We see ourselves now from space 

that lonely planet in the stars’
spinning round
the images that make ourselves 
fill our selves, 
our souls, said a different way.

10.

Our Subject, the Earth, 

Gaia herself was putting 

it all together into a spinning 

One thing

we were mirroring 

what was, 

in our minds what we 

comprehended even beyond seeing

our thoughts were the 

characters, for this constant 

narrative unfolding in our heads 

a hall of mirrors 

reflecting to an infinity

all compared to ideals, and 

dreams of objects that

may or not be

Jack was seeing that this 

structure was a preoccupation 

beyond the thing, 

where it fit 

in the whole order.

Leviathan diving and 

surfacing in a rhythm,

seen in the stars.

Even the Bang! 

One.

Surface 

we name ourselves --feel 

attached to

getting a glimpse

11.
that figure far off still 
a glimpse of that ideal 
representing Crispin self in 
all the differing aspects
of Achilles, 

the two Henrys, 
Jack, Walt and Wally, 
Vincent and Jackson, Barney--
Bill
he wanted to ‘go round’ again, 

down the hill, 
walking back up
down in careful snow plow turn
 learning a herringbone pattern, 
back up

he was listening to his transistor 
there in the snow,
 the Radio was playing, 
Paperback Writer, 
First time there

in the cold 
blowing snow. 
the same bare place
mixing Profane into the only 
Sacred he knew

Soon there would be Coca Cola
 in that Novel
and then the thought of 
no God in Russia
seemed to go too far


12.
he’d seen the figures 
running on the path 
and thought it representative 
of a glimpse,
flicker fate, if anything was True.

Candle flicker, in window
round, black
zodiac turning
reflecting all the aspects
the gods doing it in the sky

it spins and turns what is 
brought back
what would he want to see again
they were all whirled around
leaves sunsets

sunflowers
in season
they were mine
my world
gathered to myself

they made my soul
expanding in thoughts as this for you
Jack had wanted to give it away
this idealism heightened to being
gone--

It was spring and he wondered if 
the birds would be arriving
imagination was gone
nothing meant--
and money was the criterion,

Home before Dark, Part 4

13.
credence
somehow purchased with funny money
our president 
finally pushed us to action
we railed against 

the vice in his --
Well it was all dead 
we went through the 
litany of all the dead things
on the “Road”

Beauty and it’s poetry were an irony
just words, 
this death became a new beginning 
though few saw it as that.
They were too busy 

cashing in--
“our desire became too difficult 
to tell from despair.”
at least Post was over
Terminal Classic ahead

the romantic wanderings 
began all over again
pre something
all the paintings were lined up, there 
seemed simple truths between, in 

the moments
seen
memory and conscious
what was that big square 
blocking everything

14.

He didn’t like that 

didn’t understand

Jack said he needed to know 

more of the story 

that he should read on

It was the opposite 

of what he thought

it was sacred time

which meant it was an eternal 

presence 

and being here Yes, part

it did block maybe the constant,

constant,

well just thinking 

on it was what it meant

to think the present, or not just 

ideas about the thing

there was so much 

more involved 

Crispin would miss.

Achilles, was Dyonysian, 

he enacted the change. 

He pursued and never let up.

So you might not like the square 

blocking 

what you thought to be--

to be out there

it was Heaven really

why should it just be handed to one?

Maybe a Bang! 

15.

and a turning--

Crispin thought the differing aspect expressed

it best and none were perfect or 

Ideal or transcended 

this process.

Jack thought of this 

entering the west 4th Street Station

he had a pocket full of drawings 

the Subway drawings 

they kept this thought present 

and he felt a bit of a sage, 

like crazy mad,

Prophetic

talking to the guitar guy 

he thought he knew 

from the Mudd Club, maybe

it was a continuing

somewhat dangling 
conversation

there just wasnt any audience 

any more 

like when he had the crowd 

listening to him on the soap box

about the Woman’s House of Detention 

they wanted to tear down.

Jack was disappointed 

just as his mother said he would be

and he fumbled around in the 

dark church on 42nd street 

as the day wasted.

16.

but today was new 

and to and fro and to and

these repetitions he made

an abstract structure and routine

his life

he would make a picture of it, 

a painting-- that man with the walking stick 

said, to be respectful of

maybe just what the painting implied 

a structure or order 

thought of or lack of--

Eternity all toc and no tic

this forever left 

abandoned

Jack was a part

of the world and it 

was dying all around 

that tree at the 

very center was fine 

but he’d look up 

worried that it would be gone a 

good sturdy Ponderosa Pine  

Jack would draw the genres 

morphing together

into something else

Akilles couldn’t see 

any transcendence 

at death, 

still dragging Hektor 

by the hair around the arena, 

except for the meaning 

in the word.

life had been such a glut

he was trying to be beyond that weariness

of the next,

Home before Dark, Part 5

17.

He was walking Jackson’s beach 

and it was strange to see the real so very clear
rag weed there in autumn that evening

The sun setting on Louse Point.

He bent down 

and the crickets became large

and the noise deafening

became the stars and 

the crickets in the grass

blared Pollock’s tinny voice 

saying, “ the Maud--ern artist--”

Whitman would hold his own,

Paumanok, was Heaven

here in the rushing long lines 

vanishing

the hatch and over hatch

the cricket--

the aurora of the ever flashing

mystery, the net

over everything

flavoring reality

the gems, the moments

flashing

signals

if one paid attention 

to the form 

it might well speak

Jack was full of himself 

there 

at Mountain height, his Box.


18.
His arms upraised 
He felt alive
the overbrimming ideas that 
came from following the orders
and side roads, 

the meander
the drawing recognized in a dream
drawing everywhere
 in the Subway--
a language developing in hieroglyphic form

might well speak
what was this reduction saying
he tried to protect this radical from 
decoration, that’s what he 
meant by the tourist

how could they do that, 
weren’t they worried 
by the square miles 
of dead trees,
a part our hearts

a part of all those already dead
one door had begun to shut 
another opening 
Jack wanted in, not to be left behind, 
silent

the ideas gestated for years
stole years away-- but now 
the years barreled by
an earlier modern, 
he thought

19.
it was good close to the origin
pushing that naturalism to a height
a cycling then
as it falls
comes round

a necessary
fragmentation
a beauty
in the system
that was the beauty of it

Crispin said,
Yes, it was enough in the 
field catching the butterflies
though it seems a joke to Jack now
at this embarrassed distance

We didn't do enough,
Jack packed up the paint box
that bird at the top of the tree 
grasped that moment
and it did-- all exist, turning

to Katsina Face
Picasso owned
he was there at Chimayo too
copying the Christs
he made Gertrude from that

Jack wasnt sure he would ever --
she never sat still enough 
Crispin thought the landscape 
looked sad.
there was a silence, and depth,

20.
in that heat 
the thunderstorms rumbling 
still far, the lightning 
in the darkening sky.
Achilles Black 

in the Green extreme
The reduction 
Crispin sought, Jack related to a 
structure He’d made in the landscape
the mountain

simplified phase
of moon
and summer’s night
thoughts of winter’s
crystaline-- 

 kind of Asian meander
as Satie played on the radio
and silhouetted trees made a strobe effect
on his face
silently skipping

compared to that memory of Suzie’s 
snowflake in the air shaft
a bluebird flies through and
a leaf twirls between fingers
amazed

these metaphorical gods 
all Crispin had-- or wanted
ThE BluE GreeN OrB
what more?
in the eternal zooming of space

racing ahead to look back at the 
steady blaze of exuberance
here on the edge of wild 
Arkansas, and Texas, and into 
the spotted hills