thornhill and static

for Steve Dickison 1        Claude Thornhill and static.  early light on the square of the four corners love         these lights they blink and red and early          brung me morning flush with light rain grain. hand with fingers red light           blunked from out the flesh. the set-up.         he makes plans and they make plans and Audrey Totter too the iron                    claw comes down in glass         and the idiot loves it. Paradise with a warning. 2        the early morning coffee space begins at surface glass and runs to local reality. no such thing but that’s how gravity is.         grave and demure. how gravity is.  everything or most I know comes from Monk on I         Surrender Dear. this is how the captured lights signal. 3        everything laid out for life. Thornhill arranged by Mulligan. Robin’s                         Nest. Ellington says         “The world will never know what it has lost in this beautiful man,”                     says he then when Thornhill dies.         sit I still so red lights blink to dawn will come as top banana. folk forms, that too. by         the light of the silvery moon Coleman lantern Hawkins. this         nearly was mine. the red round street lights blink and blink the red round robin bounces. it isn’t         the manichean heresy it’s the manichean fallacy. this way lies the madness strung         through the mind’s bad knee  say it’s only. 4        up and down Fifth Avenue the crowds move in crowds. and nosegays. red light green light stop and think in motion natch         the poem. in the open adjustments of time and of breath is history,  everything.         you could see everything the long open death and the march of delight. the honest ice man         stops and starts his wagon on the street to end         all streets. and left behind are the bones and ice-boxes all the sad young men. Thornhill         in the density of my head. this blinking morning pinpoint code. mourning             bring my head.         drop the beat behind the chord and shimmer. what the hell the light comes creeping.         getting sentimental over         you to the end of the light. chop chop float of being         arpeggio, long gone life and float of chair         of being Cornet Chop Suey. 5        death is the past in real light. on my way the whole room turned with old machinery. just like that. a conversation takes place at the edge of old water with all those lovelies dead gone know now         going home to ordinary. to normal. to the jewel of the normal in the etched daffodil. to the light of the real through the blue skies of that mournful song         of crossing the little creek with you. how I wanted just to be. all the lovelies ranged in grass as minds and nodding         disavowals. cut my feet to ribbons did I. ran the stream bed never wanted       to be me again. paid my carfare every morning as planet turned me topside. conduction is god in the cursive.         two for tea and you for me and me for you and knowledge too. and how it seemed that we were all alone. dear.         without a proper sense of grief.  all thought comes to grief as all                the places come.  light gets interrupted thud. and here we are. hello love. like me?         I see things clearly and know there’s a shift in the grass is a mechanism. shutter me this.         the real light comes to stay with bells on. the memory stacks itself. see that face and see that face. and the perchèd tower. perched. a bird of ill-omen         is mostly a bird.    oh beauty. 6        down at the intersection of fourth and b the light is not yet upon us at each corner the circumscribed lights for no traffic blink         on and off but all just red red red and red. Jess Stacy takes that solo on the radio in the front seat empty empty empty know         my life he says. my life is here I made it something else for this brief time for this.         and when you hear it you’ll know. you’ll know and every morning here      will fall with march of crickets life to fall         in one long twitch of perfect one. one long pitch of solo eyes rolled in one. that’s how it is. Jess Jess Jess.         rare as a butterfly moon when blink goes flopping half- fold paper. intersection. bone white not white. flat and empty.         blink says stop says go says not. says solo loves it. so low                            never lies.