Echolalia

Book 112

SIXTEEN ROSES

Sixteen roses laid upon my grave
at dusk or early morning light
and here I sit and count them all,
one by one, each petal falls

toward each other like vortices
or swirling clouds of galaxies
or gaping maws of beasts
devouring me. Crimson petals

become my witnesses, reveal their
testimonies in small rotten patches
where I have touched them
or remain brilliant and bright

as days now lost to me. At any rate
I rise from my grave, put on my
business suit, prepare to go back to
work, and then just prepare to leave. April 11/11.

ALTERNATE HISTORY HAIKU

Torquemada on a rack
for the heresies, the
hypocrisies he made. April 11/11.

AYIRYNA

An orphan is rewarded in the world,
her loss compensated by wealth, for
in this age of ours we balance

all accounts and those with
nothing receive more and those with
all keep whatever they have. Ayiryna

I hope it is enough to lose me and her
and gain the whole world instead. April 12/11.

A BLAND AFFAIR

Into the vanity woods I’d often go
seeking for some love of any kind
at all and when love fell in the
shadow of my gaze I’d hope she loved
me too, though she never even tried. April 13/11.

NICK GLADSTONE

A litany of scars upon my back
for the country that I loved. Fate
all intervened then, set me on
another track, a palindrome of paths
seeming to lead perfectly toward
each other, instead leading me
opposite to who I was. They call me
a traitor for things I never did. But call
any a traitor when fate comes to call. April 13/11.

THOSE THAT CAN’T

Those that can run don’t
and those that can’t run
try to anyway.

Those that can fight don’t
and those that can’t fight
are slaughtered in any case. April 13/11.

JONAS HOLTZ

He decided upon a simple experiment
and gaining five pounds a day for forty
days reached the apogee of his plan.

He ascertained people’s reactions, various
questions, slurs or comments, wrote it all
down in his notebook to review it all for

later. Finally he had made his experiment
complete when he killed a man as he would
have killed him anyway. The weight didn’t

make him a better or lesser man; it just made
it more difficult to gut his enemy like a pig. April 13/11.

THE LENS OF PERCEPTION

The lens of perception opened wide
and suddenly I am standing on the floor
of the world and above me hang continents,
angels and demons all, a litany of crows,
a scientist amid his long dead beasts,
a few children crucifying each other on a
dare, and myself staring back at me,
smiling crookedly as if the mask were
bent or broken slightly, or wasn’t even there. April 13/11.

HATEFUL IN ITS VERY BIRTH

Hateful in its very birth the arcane mysteries
of the human soul are seared and bent-broken
for being there at all. And some claim it
better if we had no souls at all but I think not.
Better bent and broken then not there at all. April 13/11.

THEY CAN’T USE THE MONEY
THEY EVEN HAVE

They can’t use the money they even have
and yet they’re always wanting more, looking
for something greater than they are or than
they yet possess.
But money slips and pours
itself to every hand but ours who seek it not; no,
even we are sheltered by the wealth we almost
have. Yes
money owes no loyalty to any but
itself and they can’t even use the little fragments
of it that cling and grip to them for now
which later it’ll forget. April 13/11.

MANY YEARS AGO (The first line
is my father’s, April 12/11.)

Many years ago when I was just a boy
I shoveled snow and my father was so
proud. But years pass around where
they began and now I’m out on the snow
proudly watching as my boys go where
I’ve already been. April 13/11.

ALAMDREA

“I want to play someone other
than I am Alamdrea. I want to
scale the heights of other men
and plumb the depths of other

women. I want to hold a ring
of Gyges, become invisible for
a time, or perhaps better create

a ring of individuality and
give it to another so I won’t be
who I am.” “And what then?”

“Perhaps I’ll go to sell my soul
at the crossroads with a name
I never had, dear Alamdrea, dear.” April 13/11.

ON SLOAN’S URANIA

It was a butterfly that died out in 1908,
dark green lined wings, slender body, almost
too beautiful to imagine laying now in some
collector’s glass case or a museum’s box
beside other lesser strains like pieces of
a jeweler’s art who hadn’t bothered to give
his piece a proper, perfect name.

It lived in Jamaica and if I had lived then
I could have traveled to the farthest Southern
shore and seen the bones of the Ona people
lying in Tierra Del Fuego, for they had been
wiped out and almost exterminated in 1903,
mostly bones between the lives of few
survivors left, leading to a final sharp
decline from one to none in 1974.

Perhaps someday the museums will be
museums to others, creatures who will dwarf
the tender mercies of leaving lives in boxes
or glass cases or pinned to walls, some great
thing who will barely notice all the efforts
done to preserve the dead when all are dead
and gone save the titans standing at the end
of time, crushing all things underfoot without
ever noticing they dared commit a crime. April 13/11.

GENGHIS KHAN AND ALEXANDER

We had this argument you see, over who
was the greater lord of men, and I said
Genghis Khan and my friend said Alexander.

“He united half the world,” I began, “ended
torture in his homeland, gave the Mongols
literature and an ability to surpass centuries

of inner conflict to reach the farthest lands.”
“And he slaughtered millions,” my friend
replied. “Your favourite slaughtered as many

for the times.” “True but he also brought so
many wonderful things like art and science
with him in his wake my dear boy.” We

sat and drank our coffee and stared across
at each other for a time, thinking a bit, I how
Alexander had spent his life trying to outdo

his father in all things, even leading his men
through the desert as punishment for never
claiming India and my friend thinking over the

Khwarazm Empire and the Tenguts who were
slaughtered out of hand for defiance against
the Khan one time too many, or simply

one time then we both ordered some nice
soup and read the papers about the new tyrant
murdering millions as if it weren’t a crime. April 13/11.

IN THE COBRA’S LAND (Original version.
Recorded April 17/11.)

Deserts like a sea of sand flow with glowing
ecstacy as soldiers with their bleached white
helmets and brown mustaches march
across these seas of thirst.

The delta lands of emerald grass flow with
the calm, calm wind as farmers wearing flesh
and blood masks plant their crops and watch

while the fertile mud turns to hard clay. In
the courtyards of their homes women sweep
up the dust as it shines like jewels in the
evening sun.

Soldiers with their fire sticks race across the
valley floor like wild fire and the wind. Men
with stern faced looks cry with secret pain,
as their country is no longer the same. Women

still sweep away the dust and men still plant
the crops but for those years not matter how few
another held the land and took away a people’s pride
just for sake of a water passage way leading to
the lands of the sun.

THAT TREMULOUS APPLAUSE

The tremulous applause of the masses comes
to me in waves and through their unseen glances

I can still discern the methods, the madnesses
that come of seeing life through other eyes

than ours have ever seen and in their unseen
hopes and in the hopes of others I know my time

will come, has come, has passed us all behind. April 15/11.

THE GREY SKINNED WOMEN OF BRAZIL

And they seem so out of place and yet not out of place
at all, there in the slums, the suburbs, the halls of office,
whispering like silent toads or sirens or the maws of

darker beasts. They stand taller than the tallest man
and if I could see them eye to eye I doubt I’d look them
in the eye and they are so intimating to anyone they meet.

And where do they come from and what names do they
call themselves by? No one knows and no one cares to
ask. Instead they move like wraiths or shadows but

they are not so out of place at all in the country of
the immigrants, the jungles, the cartels and the malls. April 15-17/11.

AN IRON OVERCAST SKY

An iron overcast sky and the storms
are all splinters of steel and the rivers

run with nails and the streets with skin
for when the skies are iron the very

world is skin and flesh and eyes. April 15/11.

ALONG THE EDGES OF MY DOMAIN

Along the edges of my domain Satan and God
sit and debate what is to become of me

but I fear no hell nor heaven, I have both
stranded in my heart, to linger and to languish

and to praise and to be blamed. April 15/11.

IT’S NOT WHAT YOU DO

It’s not what you do it’s how you do it,
it’s not assailing heaven or making the
geography of hell complete,

it’s to do it in my own way, at my own
time, lest I am less the hero and more
the bureaucrat. April 15/11.

THE CAVE

Beyond the mouth of the cavern
after traveling through darkness there
opens light and beyond the light the

jungles all violet and crimson and
vaguely stained orange and a tower
and a city beyond this

where the bones of the gods still lay.
And beyond that? No one can say. No
one has yet ventured into the cave. April 15/11.

THE SCIENTIST

It becomes a cliche, the mad scientist
in lab coat, developing the ability to travel
back in time, gaze upon the dinosaurs in

primordial countrysides. But it is a cliche
for a reason. Who would not first view the
titans of the world before checking

upon the mice who became the men we are? April 15/11.

THE DAGGER PLUNGED DEEP WITHIN

They live in forests neath a foreign sun the colour
of dried leaves or autumn green dawn and they look
almost human save for the green skin, blackened

eyes of coal, a perpetual smile on their lips. And
being fools one thought to shoot one and did, only
for the bullet to collapse upon his chest, and smiling

they explained to us it was always so, and every
force exerted would always be countered back. So
now we are sent as emissaries and warning; what

they did to us can never be taken back, to know
we can do nothing in that country all of theirs. April 15/11.

PIETY

To argue piety is not to argue
morality, for moral action always

differs from the actions of the crowd.
No, instead piety is the clothing

by which morality conceals itself,
else morality were naked and we all

saw how little was truly there to
conceal, or clothe, or wear. April 15/11.

MISJUDGED THE DISTANCE THERE

She misjudged the distance there
and fell to hell. Would any have it
any other way, the thought that

torments were caused not by choice
but a sole misstep? And of course
I hear you say only the guilty

demand punishment, well, why is
that, for are the righteous the only
ones who receive praise? April 15/11.

CONCEPT ALBUM

My idea of a concept album: first we have the
artist being crucified and the first four songs

reflect the fact. Then the man goes backward
in time and explains all his policies, his visions

and his dreams. Two more songs reflect that.
Finally we see him rape a woman. Half a line

of the opening act is mentioned as almost
something he did. Once we know what kind

of man he is we listen again to the album to
see what kind of audience we are, as we react. April 15/11.

TEMPORAL OCD

There is the statement often made that if we
could go backward, fix our mistakes, then the
better life we’d lead for having corrected what
flaws we made.

I wrote thousands of poems and destroyed
many more than I ever kept, made works and
ideas that could set the world ablaze, but if I

had the opportunity to regain all I had lost why
would I stop there? Would I not then try to redo
and redo every act again, correct each point of
my life like an

artist transforming
a few crude brush strokes to every school and
method of art til the original work was lost?

If we seek perfectly to set all things right we warp
and twist ourselves along the path of never knowing
the mistakes that shaped our souls for better, for
worse, or not at all. April 15/11.

SHADOW’S REQUIEM

And the opera plays and there in his palace king
Parikchit awaits Takshaka and the sound of waves
is heard for the tower and the palace sits within
the center of a lake and then the monks arrive,

each adorned with the strange mysteries and runic
scenes and signs of magic which conceal their true
forms to the king but not to us. And finally the
golden insect comes and lights upon the king,

transforms all to a golden savaged crimson
dragoned thing and in the flames of poison he
sings out a final aria, laments his own mistakes,

his own brief fate, and perishes. Then Takshaka
and the nagas gaze across the audience, watch our
mockeries, our sad pantomimes of action, the weaker

goals of lives less celebrated than Parikchit, and Takshaka
begins to applaud and the nagas but follow after. April 15/11.

THE PULP MAGAZINES

In the pulps the heroes are always white, middle class,
loved by women from many worlds, hated by some vast,
usually asian but not always, seeming menace,

and that was the sole entertainment for some.
Well why not reverse all things, a nice asian woman
loved by other women from many worlds, (and men too,

why not?) battling the evil forces of some vaguely cacausian
foe, wielding swords with the space suits for swords can cut
and do more damage than projectiles in the void anyway.

But is that enough to alter six decades of the public
imagination? Why not? Most people can’t remember
what happened in the news six days ago, or less. Changing
people’s views of things is such an easy thing to do. April 15/11.

SUBJECTIVITY

If I curse a man it is objective but if he
responds well and laughs than something

I did was done wrong for I had hoped

to destroy him, though I never did. And
learning this I realized it is not the words we

say but how they are interpreted; threatening
a man is hit or miss, unless I hit his face. April 15-17/11.

NEVER AT EASE

Your mind is never at ease until it’s done,
til all labour is finished, all wars won, then

finally, but finally the days can all wind

down, the nights all stop like the gears of
a clock broken without a single sound. April 15/11.

IN THE KHWAREZM EMPIRE

And the messengers and emissaries were all dismayed or killed
and the great Khan, after seeing the carnage done against his name,
offered one last chance to the Shah to apologize but the man would

not bow or bend, so the great Khan bent the world about the man
instead. The horses were faster than thought or wind and within
days across the deserts they had come, and the Shah, proud man

that he was, stationed many to fight the rabble that came from
uncivilized climes against the heart of the civilized world. And the
cities, mighty cities of stone and glass and the glaziers and the poets

fell and were destroyed and none lingered after them, no not even
the thoughts they ever were. And where the children cried and wept
they cried no more for they were slaughtered out of hand, and their

very moans stilled and broken down to less than they even were.
And where soldiers fought against the Khan they died and where
men fled they were cut down and if any surrendered they were taken

to places they did not know, made to labour and build new cities for
the new lords of all the world. And when all was finished, cities
murdered, millions lost or scattered, spent like the wind is spent

when turning mountains to dust, the Khan did not weep, did not cry,
did not rend his clothes. He had already turned his eyes westward.
His honour had yet to be satisfied. April 15/11.

ON THE COBRA’S ISLAND

On the cobra’s island sits a paradise of scales
and fangs and claws for those beasts the snakes
devoured.

I’ve often
wondered why I was spared the shipwreck and
the waves but to arrive in the jungles of the

serpent-kind but I was never one to yield to
god or storm or demon. The cobra sits upon his
throne but soon that throne is mine. April 15/11.

INFINITE VARIETIES OF INFORMATION

Infinite varieties of information and if I said
the sky were blue each soul and eye has a trillion
shades to colour their experience by, or crimson,
violet, green or gold. Are any colours, thoughts
or words uncoloured of the mind? I hope not,
else my words are barely enough to satisfy. April 15/11.

THE KESTRELS

Husband and wife: detective agency.
Place of work: South America, Miami, LA.
Average fee: whatever their wealthy patrons
can afford to pay. Time between a case is
presented and solved: forty-five minutes,
a day at most. Reason for work: the only
excuse that keeps the pair from a divorce. April 15/11.

AGENT VEIMHS AND AGENT WOLENSKY

And it’s the war again and Johnny Red is trying
to retake the USA and the only thing preventing
the total collapse of the free world is Sarah
Veimhs and Chad Wolensky, so off they go

to fight and stop the evil monsters from taking
over. And after they are given all the gadgets,
quirky one-liners, chance to defeat their
counterparts they get the luxury to leave,

go home, away from each other and pretend
that there is no one else and they can play at
the notion that they alone deserve the praise. April 15/11.

THE JACKHAMMER SAGA

All muscle bound and full to its own limits of violence
the comic, or rather its ideas dissolved, distended outward
like war ravaged orphans, and there beneath it all, the guns,

the over the top violence, the useless sex that never seemed
mature enough to stand alone, all that lay at the bottom of the
work is a man scribbling out ideas hoping a few will stick,

finding himself a multitude of one, en masse groveling
for inspiration from someone else, which never comes. April 15/11.

THE CASTE

They were grey skinned insects who had amassed
a great civilization among the stars and later I learned
they were divided by castes. Some spent their lives

labouring to build but never did enough so always died
bereft of their “chosen” fields, others were warriors,
their armour toughened by their time in the hearts of suns

with no one left to kill for their work was done. Still
more were artists who had devoted themselves to every
artistic pursuit which wasn’t that many for they had

no tongue. Still more were explorers but they had searched
through fifty trillion worlds and save the Earth they had
found no one. Some were religious who taught the way to

be saved but because castes were divided they could
only preach to themselves. Finally there were politicians
whom no one obeyed. They needed no leadership of
any kind. I turned away dismayed. April 15/11.

THE NEVIDIANS

And here it seemed evolution could not explain the
Nevidians at all. They were tall and short and round and
thin and wings adorned them or no wings at all. And some
were wise and some were fools, some had fangs and

others pincers like an insect would, and some had tails
and others no tails at all. And they looked at us and
wondered what we were, who had only one shape, one
form, and laughing or crying asked what we had learned. April 15/11.

IN NEWFOUNDLAND OR LABRADOR

In Newfoundland or Labrador the ocean
swells the shoreline and women look seaward
bound where their loves are drowning as waves

are tossed across the ships and they bring up
the ocean’s wealth, then turn their doomed ships
shoreward bound and even dead they are reunited. April 15-17/11.

THEY WENT INTO THE WOODS
(From a dream I had on the morning
of April 15/11.)

They went into the wood and first he died but
then reality altered herself and she lay dead.
As for him he wasn’t there anymore.

And in the country of the dead she met
her friend who offered her some blood and
her own features changed, that friend of hers,

rings under the eyes and a face all torn of blood,
and then it was all altered and we were standing
in the morgue and they were putting her

together, setting heart again to run. And
suddenly she is back, and suddenly gone. And
by the cave the police found her body and her

photo and the photographs of her dead family,
her father, her mother and her dog. April 15/11.

THE INCA (A dream I had on the
morning of April 14/11.)

They were Inca and the wires came from their
eyes and suddenly all were the same, same braids
and long brown hair til the Europeans arrived.

And it wasn’t Peru but British Columbia where
they must still reside, changed by the colonizers,

and then I stand in the deserts of Arabia, the plains
of India and learn how changed these places were

when the Europeans arrived, but India seemed to
have survived better than the rest. I wonder what it
means when the immigrants arrive? April 15/11.

ZATARTHA

Go to Zatartha and the angels there will guide you son
to where I am. Cross the bridge of sighs and look for me
in hell awhile, sit and chat and then turn back to heaven
where you surely long to be.

But before you go back to paradise at the pillar and the
caverns of Zatartha leave some coins behind. I may not
be able to take them son but the thought of them is mine. April 15/11.

THE SWAN

And there in Buenos Aires she investigates
the crime, subtle sins and crimes like men

being unkind, servants too friendly with their
employers, beggars who haven’t sense to

leave her well enough alone. Oh all kinds of
crime Bella Donnia investigates, except of course

for the reasons that have made her so unkind. April 15/11.

THE BALLAD OF THE JEALOUS ONE
(From an old Scottish ballad.)

“Go down to the water’s edge my
sister, dulce is there to find.”

“But will you wait for me by the tide,
will you wait for me by the tide?”

“Of course for we are family. I’ll wait
and I’ll abide.”

So down they went but the older jealous
one waited and took her time, and the
younger noticed not the coming of the tide.

Then up the elder went and the younger
fell behind, and the jealous girl married the
man who had been the younger’s bride. April 15/11.

THE LAST KILLER IN ALL THE WORLD

Killers in a land no more and here
is one who killed the king of all

the world to start the next war
and had he known he would have

done the same. It was the point of
course, to take a life, to end all

lives, but keep to him eternal
fame. And yet none live so none
can even curse him to his face. April 16/11.

THE ANDROID POET

And if a machine would pen a line of verse
would I cease my writing then? Why?
Anyone can create a verse, anyone can
forge a line of words. If we stopped
merely because another poet started what
faith would mankind have in us I wonder? April 16/11.

IN BRIADA

In the halls of Inbriada I beheld the girl
of shadows, in the eyes of the king I saw her

flesh uncoil. And I am laid bare as pillars
of stone are laid bare, meant to wait eternally

for the shadows to imprint their touch into the
flesh that I am forced eternally to wear. April 16/11.

THE IN-BETWEEN (The first two
lines are my father’s April 15/11.)

It’s not the in-between part that
counts, it’s the starting and the end.

If I cried out silently with empty, hollowed
or holocausted eyes or turned my gaze to

seven worlds of jungle each brilliant as a scale
caught in the teeth of some venomous thing,

if I prayed to the gods of Inlilah, Izanra, Izardra
or Gazrejh, the gods of shadow, light, words

and deeds, or cast back my days to the courts
of Dalriada, the celebrations of Hilaria

when Rome was king, would this matter if
I began poorly, or ended worse?

If I stood upon a world where all feared open
spaces though open plains were all the people
had to set their days all by, or cramped sat in

the cities where people feared closed dimensions
and in their endless anxieties closed themselves

in all the more, well would this matter to any

who began their lives in terror or ended them
the same, or would the beginning and the ending
be all that they remembered and all things in

between but a meager illusionary blur?
It is the ending of days that matter and the
beginnings always as well. Even hell or heaven
are forgotten before they were or after they are now. April 16-17/11.

SANITY

When day begins and I rise up from
my bed, shake off the dreams I had
and go to work. And I meet the
women that I meet every day and

sometimes hear them talking about
nothing in particular to each other
as if they stood on the other side of
the world and couldn’t quite

understand what the other ones were
saying. And I walk my dog on Tuesdays,
go to movies with friends, lust after the
pretty girl I see occasionally, but nothing

comes of it. And I listen to the radio
sometimes, hear the news, discover
places on a map stricken with sorrows.
I give to charities, go to movies, watch

tv way in the middle of the night, go to
sleep. I guess people might call me sane.
I don’t know what sanity is. I see things
of nightmares and welcome them in,

hear things of nightmares and write it all
down in the middle of the night when no
one is around, feel the rush of insanity

when the sound of my heartbeat, the feel
of my breathing gets too much. But I am
sane I guess. No one has ever told me
otherwise to my face, at least not yet. April 11/11.

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