Classic Poem

Flying home from Vietnam across thirteen time-zones
I underwent an 8 February thirty-seven hours long
& read O'Casey's autobiography chapter “A Long Ashwednesday”

With such a cross of Camel ash between my eyes watched “The Garden of Allah”
Trappist & lady with eyes the size of tennis balls & number-two eyebrows honeymooning on the all-proving desert ground
with a handkerchief-headed Basil Rathbone (who just died)

The present past in the plastic box with glass & the cathode ray back to 1936
year of the death of Lorca
—antennae are the poets of the race

by means of needles
Boyer & Mar(ia Magda)lene
by means of Needles

Mystery of the body never solved/
limbo
by means of electric needles
on just such
a summer's day

means of needles in just such a month of July
leaves of plastic
flowers of plastic

First month
of the happy
fiscal year

the wilderness of Spain & politics

in the lap of the blood of the mother's meat