Wit
[there’s] something to be said … not much, for the
idea that everyone ought to commit suicide once in a while
Hayden Carruth
Listen to the hiss zigzag
aggressions, depression, graphs
while calmer heads shake their souls --
stirred in sadness
do the best they can?
Who wanted to be the kid
parked in an alcove reading runes
till only peace could come,
like a scum, a sediment obscuring
penis assessments in locker rooms?
Who nurses the savage complaint?
Games, old boy as if
some Cartesian evil genius
were whispering
What --
about me. But what
about the me?
Parking in the Garden,
[Strapped to oxygen]
Lying on rocks
(page change)
Or sitting in aloeswood
scented air conditioning
This sentimental act of tail
-wags-dog: ‘Why are we here?’
deflects the slow drag
throb centered in
the nothing
mambo.
Viz., be kind.
Wit (2)
A crow flaps up and croaks
(I think): Well, fuck you.
Suchness a cloudy sweep, an open palm
indicating the four corners, the
totality … Guess what.
No answer.
Wit (3)
But death’s a portal into
Where you master the art
Of farting it off,
The anteroom
The drowning rescuer
Adverts for pie in the sky . . .
I was the wrong midwife.
Whither? Whence? Why?
Great Valley Spirit
Tao, she’s the mother
For whom even a casual cough,
A crow’s croak
Is part of the art.
Wit (4)
‘We’re spoiled,’ laughs the woman
in the cool
neon
like stadium
UFO
lights
supermarket, ‘We’re the
cool ones, we
used to lay out under trees
on days like this.
Dew point heat
on a day of global warming
paper thin blood blistered
struggling
‘Though you might disavow kinship,’
she adds, ‘I am your twin.’
jim mc curry, b. 10-3-43 in hawthorne (los angeles) california,
has taught at carl sandburg college since 1980, in poetry & philosophy;
since recently going online, his links include Big City Lit, Cyber Oasis,
Drought, and Snow Monkey—ten poems in all, four of which now
appear at the websites of the first two zines just named.
His philosophical interests center on nonduality: especially maha ati,
dzogchen, or madhyamika. (David Loy's recent study, NONDUALITY,
is a convenient handle.) For example, "the man" includes Huang-po,
Yun-men, Dogen. The trouble with What Is Enlightenment is the
dubious assumption that we can think our way to enlightenment,
or that there is truly conscious evolution, 'progress,' rather than
recovery of primordial innocence/happiness. In this respect,
contrary to some of his best friends, actually, Jim is somewhat
skeptical of Andrew Cohen's work, and Ken Wilbur's—not to say
the work of Eckhart Tolle, let's say. The literary interests include
V. Woolf, B. Cendrars, Lydia Davis, Knut Hamsun, Carlos Drummond
de Andrade, Casares and Borges, Marquez, Neruda, William Carlos
Williams, Jack Collom. I think that's enough indication. O yes, Pessoa.
Jim has a granfalloon of masks, some of whom are becoming
heteronyms, mebbe: Baron Axel Angst, Ramadooly Foofoo, H. Pumphrey
Smogrove, and the most fully realized of all, Dogwag Bummerstead, PhD,
aka Old Dog.
email: jmccurry@csc.cc.il.us