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

Merrily Goin' Round, Part 2

5.

stepping across green rolling hills

there were moments

he could capture

it all before it slipped 

away once more and again

He simply saw 

it all 

in that spinning orb, in black

the outward appearances 

were stifling

and Crispin would turn inward 

he’d be on his way 

once more

it would suffice

though he lamented 

the lack of 

CompletioN in the AudiencE

Carter had asked who Jack thought that was--

Huh?

Hamlet, 

wondered-- if it would be. 

For the profundity of BeautY-- 

Boy, the first time 

he saw the Pacific, 

then the Big Sur

coming down from Half Moon Bay

arriving to the wild Sands Beach

God, or anyhow that Ideal

was on his side 
and Boy,

Achilles had really screwed the whole thing up



6.
We were marching again
a few were walking away with it all 
and we were just watching
them shoot each other 
playing at Quail games

Crispin had seen these blue figures
looming and thought of them
somehow they got in line of 
things for his 
mind to order and 

it was hard thinking 
it could be the end
the oil crisis and the environment 
just went on another war longer 
than the LAST waR

they accepted it as reality 
like God, again-- no changing this
fundamentalist dilemma
Crispin was found in this 
frantic, going round

the paintings had their own 
rules which were not 
written down
they must have come 
from the looking

and what others saw, also
and the relation then to what we felt 
we saw today and into the future
as spring came

to summer


7.
but the world had grown 
outsized in exurbenant soda size 
and the huge rear ends jiggling 
what our land had become 
dotted with

and driving round in carts--
there were too many and the 
aisles were all blocked,
abortion was the issue and wanted 
more and more to fuel

the economic continuity 
of our great land-- 

of the few advantaged, and 
nobody went to the Parks 

anymore, just the French 

and German tourists

muscling into 

to get the view of things

We sedated by Wal MArT

Jack worried 

the scene was 

getting flat, 

what of the character 

he mistrusted as blind stabs 
and the mess 

he had already created 

which had seemed authentic

as long as it was fashion--

and that portrait or representation
of the GreaT MaN, ohh, 

8.
That he believed 
in the Myth, in the Ideal
that, that really bugged him 
that depth 
in the marks

and futzing, to greatness
he thought a device 
Sincerity and Authenticity
it all came round though
ThE RomAntiC 

stabbing and slash was real 
to an extent but was an aim at a 
shape to contain an identity.
though it was true some 
figures were stuck in a phase

seen by another 
in their own phase
we were planets all revolving at 
varied distance in differing 
light and season wondering 

gauging
what it looked like
then that was just a part
he thought ,
Jack’s mother said that would be the 

problem, thinking too much on it
he should trust in an
Authority, we would leave unnamed
it was ok til Dad could 
supply the frenzied answers,

“because I said so”
Weird God, Alien God,
No God, I could see,
all of them,
though that book on the ego and id

and sublime and the intellectual 
beyond
the real was all so much more 
interesting than the speculation and 
mystery fell short 

Merrily Goin' Round, Part 3

9.

to knowing it was 

all so amazing and the view

that long view and 

deep space 

seemed so beyond one

that to collapse it all to an understanding

a system super imposed

was an equal sensation

ArT ItselF

was the beyond he was seeking

the counter step and 

interface exchanging 

glimpses and noticing designs that 

were puzzle and game 

enough to get through

they were complex and had a 

pleasing feel and 

along the way 

he saw that the black or 

intimations of, 

were something that 
prodded one along to make 

something of it

yes, Jack would still talk 

from time to time 

of reverence 

as in feeling thankful

and maybe just Karma

we can understand it in another 

language sometimes better

GreEn BoOK SuPreMe!

RoaD AheaD

it all opened 

upon the sacred 

and abstracted 

10.

spirit of, his feeling 
for the profane was dwindling
Corporate tactics which made it 
hard to see, and the Newspeak
Just what was real 

beyond what was calculated for 
one in the ever growing numbers
even the widening riches were
part of the glut
and over the falls

so reaching for spirit
between the body of 
and the thought
and the enthusiasm 
for, Why, Well, Maybe-- 

supplied by this
imaginative metaphor and 
its place in the order which 
made a beauty and aesthetic 
which Jack was not afraid 

of and had some universal implication 
of humanity-- because we died 
that we all died,
Crispin would carry on
the reverence 

came from having 
been left though the profane irony of 
reporting the blunt 
reality 
he had an earlier version on tape and 


11.
Jack listened as the sky grew large 
and that wonderful word
Crystaline.
Would Achilles ever arrive?
The road did seem the reality 

the way, 
and the life on the road
we all were spinning on our way 
somewhere, the elephants would smell 
and fondle the ground 

lumber on, RoarinG 
through Kansas 
the ScareCroW crossed his ArMS 
pointing every which way
Jack realized of course

he was making it all up

He wasnt even sure if Crispin agreed

knowing damn well Achilles 
certainly would not 
have the patience to 

pause
he was still still dragging his foe 

around by the hair

he didn’t even know why
at this point

it was the Rage
at his own death

ahead on this wonderful road 

he saw that in the distance,
in the cool air,


12.
Childlike Achilles
the sun from with in though-- 
Boy, those 
Easily understood clouds 
were always arriving 

the moment he crossed 
the state line.
He kept going back 
with in to find that 

ideal, 

Jack guessed 

was the flOweR PrizE, 
how he kept on
the profane having turned 
to the opposite

garbage metaphor 
standing in for
confused time
it is all guarded by a copy 
of ourselves!

the minotaur 
out to destroy
he is us
he creates and destroys
praying, our soul to keep

the blank in our eye
black and white striped 
whale descending 
and through bubble wake 
ascending to poof 

and steam of
keeping 
on and on-- ward
even in the Mayan images 
he saw the same 

Merrily Goin' Round, Part 4

13.

the rocks forming 
the crown 

of the Mesa

were a message, 

no comprehension of

existed in Jack's own brain 

he was back into the woods, 
in the reeds without oxygen
Achilles dreaming a shield
and on that World 
a vision 

shape, which led to a figure 
of cerulean hue and out line
Jack would draw
one day
He didn't want to let go

it was all coming to an end
and he'd retire and dream
on to a more lucid, hopeful
form of the globe
his head, mirrored

it was coming around
from moon phase
his mind,
just glimpses of

the labyrinth he was lost in

the road and sun leading him on

patterns, patterns, repeating

matched in DNA sequence

then-- he saw that this flat 
was getting complex


14.

once

I mean, I like, this routine-- I have 

Crispin created it 
out of all the options--

the universes exploding

in the sky, the light just arriving

the disorder repeated constitutes 

an order
the images of the things 

he thought came 

up from the horizon in stars their 

their forms, 

my idealizations
keeping me on 

there was a promise 

of sorts there just in the keeping 

on he’d wake to each day

though it was still dark

Crispin wanted to rehearse 

the day

the work, and the hatch 

and over hatch and over 
again at height, 

comin’ round

The NighT

it took a prayer 
and some preparation

he saw the evil in just waiting 

for the next--

Crispin was, well surprised 

to have used that word,
The wHoLe World 

was still to come

Jack had no time to waste

What a sad time, Jack thought 

and thought 
uP and around

He’d have to do something about it,

in a dream

He traveled far, into that death

that end
Saw transparent clouds in heat

shimmer

Crispin made something physical

and ReaL, Achilles 

15.

still wondered and 
Jack just trudged, the happy way

He worried  

for the perfect out come

the revolutions, 

Jack saw

over and Crispin wrote, in Sun

flower motion 

mumbling on his rumpled bed 

something about

wave after wave,

the golden-rayed flowers
distance from flower 

to AsheN form, night day, were 

and, will be BacK aRounD

this sight, 

this knowing, this "Earth 

from space.” spinning 
circuit, turning

SurprisE and ExageratioN
Pleasure in the AbstracT MinD
and BeautY, the Black and death 
and WinteR mind of
seasonal Mythos 

explaining this
Change which equals our own--
and reconciling, these opposite colors 
of Black and White and pigment paint--
Jack made a World.