Thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump, floating here for millennia, seems like forever, one-cell two-cell ameoba-minnow frog reptillian brain stem morphing mammalian tail, lungs, lobes, cerebella, Amniotic Sea. now dreaming, sucking a thumb, cramped, safe, thump-thump, thump thump.
Two: Birth
Spewing into searing fluorescent light. The cold unmuffled scorch of your own highpitched screaming.
Dialectics, man. You can’t travel in outer space. Waaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh! The twin orbed goddess is cradling you, cooooooooooooooing, too la loo ra loo ral . . .
Three: School
See Dick run. Run, Dick, run.
Listen up.
The owl and the pussy cat went to sea [. . .] I tink I taw a puddy tat.
Look, look!
We loved with a love that was more than a love.
tink a tank a tunk a tunk tunk.
Four: Adventure
You, the cartoon mouse, comfy and safe, peering from a cave,
across a distant fluorescent galaxy of linoleum linoleum linoleum geometric patterns accordion-like pantheistic patterns receding into infinity.
The smell of food, the smell of blood
boom boom boom boom
the thumping of a bass!
Five: Stepping Out
Sighing like a train, passing through a thicket, evening’s misty monocle.
Holmes’s hat, a hound’s tooth, footprints in the mole-tunneled mush: mold – musk – rotting humus.
Over your shoulder the fading village lights blinking – sinking – no more –
* * *
It’s getting near dark – follow the prints, the staggering Prince, What if [he (the bastard)] tempt you
toward the flood [. . .] or the dreadful summit of a cliff [. . .] beetl[ing] o’er his base [. . .]
What if? Think. Placenta, playpen, pup tent. Too la loo la rhy.
* * *
Siren’s song, scratchy recording, fly me to the moon. that’s one small step
The lake, like a moat, two oars, a boat, flat bottomed, wooden, warped.
Gliding through the mist, an owl’s desolate four notes, lakewater lapping, lisping, yes!
Six: Jonah *
Swallowed up! fright of fall, diminishing scream, right flailing, tumbling, per second per second, cartwheeling, and disappearing black reek, splashing,
swimming, clinging to flotsam luce muto.
Walk this way ?
Yes.
Oui, da. si si
O, C., CC Ryder
Going like mad [,] and yes[,]
I said yes I will yes. And there was a stair,
and,
I walked
right
up.
Seven: The Axial Age
Demographics, man, the cloak of invisibility, you can travel in outer space,
diving into the dark, driving like a bat, exploiting the mazes of Old Milwaukee,
your own heart thumping, flipflopped foot stomping the accelerator, “Quark, erg, quark, erg, quark, erg,”
Boom – out go the lights. The spinning stops. Thunderous silence.
* * *
Up through the attic door you enter the Bardo, skipping the Pythagorean,
skirting the Druidic sacrifice, ambiguous moans, the panting, the rasp of ripping silk.
Dimly aware of the ecstatic static electricity, flipflopped, through the portal of the seven sacred vowels, you pass,
ignoring the Good News, dismissing desert deprivation, avoiding eye contact w/ warrior and virgin.
* * *
The rotary motion of samsara ceases. Matter doesn’t matter. Form is
Emptiness. Emptiness form.
uncreated all pervading immaterial
impersonal self-existing indestructible
Eight: Glimpsing the Goddesses *
An open door at the top of the stairs. Safe and sound,
you enter the deepest chamber of all the temple all the tea in China
There is a velvet couch, two sacred serpents entwined like lianas.
* * *
too la loo ra loo ral knitting up the raveled sleeve of care twin orbs, sun and moon,
too la loo melting into perfect crystaline unconsciousness la ral
道 道 道
* * * For six days you sleep then arise 道
not you not I not we
thump thump thump thump 道
Nine: Going Home **
Exhausted ogres with denture breath and walkers, witches in wheelchairs, dragons flattened like frogs.
A tip of the hat – Daisy, Daisy – not a cloud in the sky.
The boogie man’s diabetic, his feet swaddled in gauze.
The big bad po-please-man, porcupine buzzcut, obese, blowing bubbles on a park bench.
The unforgiving nun, now near ninety or so, suffering a sponge bath.
Look, Jonathan Edwards bowing to you as you whistle a tune:
O Daisy, Daisy, I’m half crazy too la loo la loo
Ten : Again, the Threshold *
The lake, a mirror, the sky, a mirror, Mirror, mirror [. . . ]
A sail, a skiff, glitter of sun rays The receding temple
as unsubstantial as the coast of Connemara wrapped in mist.
Too la loo la loo ral Too la loo la lye
The sun climbing, the cove coming into view.
No cliffs here – just a path of pine straw in the forest.
No big bad wolves or gingerbread houses. Or fathers’ ghosts.
Thump thump goes the heart. Thump thump goes the earth. Thump thump go the drums.
Eleven Two Brains, Two Worlds
But you and I’ve, we’ve been through that, like this, like this and that,
like the reptilian: the Inquisitions, the jihads, like man, like been there, like done that.
Like the neo cortex: Sanskrit, Pali, Linear B, algebra, calculus.
like the motion of twin orbs, like the valley of the shadow
as if silence is whispering something there, in the silence, some thing
First, you gotta plow and pit your face
so infants in strollers burst bawling
when they see you on the sidewalk pacing,
stopping, grabbing your pen, scrawling
lines that stagger like drunks across
a coaster lifted from some shit hole joint
in East L.A. You gotta, of course, toss
down at least a fifth of rotgut and do a couple of joints
before noon. Feel the hurt her repulsion brings
when you notice the cute salesgirl wince.
Whine about the wine, the tattered wings
of that heartbreaking filly Pegasus.
Think Milton’s Satan in a methadone clinic,
self-destructive, self-loathing, sardonic.
You Do Hoodoo 