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I am Giorgio Finogle, You

I am Giorgio Finogle, you
Remember me, I too attempted
A “Pleasures of Peace”, in
Which I wanted to include
Each person in the universe
Discussing their own bag, their
Own bag, ha ha, that’s
How we used to lay
It down, ha ha, back
In the day, ha ha,
But you know the story,
The snarl, the leap, the
Head injury, the stay in
The hospital, how Kenneth just
Couldn’t stop laughing, how hysteria
Transported us all, yes, I
Am that Giorgio Finogle, and
Back in the day those
Were the pleasures of peace, 
Now I return to you,
Today is Sunday, 7 plus
9 = 16, I’m Giorgio
Finogle here to tell you
That while there have been
Pleasures, while there will be
Pleasures, they have never been
The pleasures of peace, I
Loved Kenneth, I love his
Poem, to this day I
Think it’s amazingly great, I’m
Glad he got the Peace
Award instead of me, because
If I, Giorgio Finogle, had
Been the winner, I’d have
Had to mail the trophy
Back, the things you can
Learn from a good stiff
Whack, let’s go for a
Walk now, it’s spring and
Very beautiful, no, wait a
Minute, an ambulance has just
Pulled up across the street ...
After the paramedics leave I
Knock on the door, see
If anyone needs help or
A ride to the hospital,
Learn the man who collapsed
(Retired, late 70s, vacuums the
Church 3 times a week,
Takes care of everyone but
Himself) will be all right,
Think: peace or no peace,
I, Giorgio Finogle, will continue
Zhili Byli as an adjunct
To Ko Un's 10,000 Lives,
7 + 9, by the way,
Being Iraqi bodies found this
Morning, according to Yahoo! headlines,
My apologies for ranting, my
Very dear reader, but every
Now and then a shrieking
Fit's exactly what I need.

Bob, You Wrote I Thought

Bob, you wrote I thought
We invented poetry to have
Something to sing over the
Grave... We did. The song
Has 4 verses. 1. O
Death. Fuck you. Fuck you.
Fuck you. The person buried
Here was a friend of
Mine. 2. O Death, ol'
Buddy, won't you spare me
Over for a ‘nother year?
3. O Death, since no
Guarantees, we’re gonna drink and
Dance and fuck til sunrise.
4. O Death. Fuck you.
Don't the sun look good,
Love, shinin' through the trees?
In Ted Berrigan's version there's
A 5th verse: anybody got
Some pills and a Pepsi?
An hour after writing this
I'm driving to the acupuncturist,
“Brokedown Palace” on the box,
I listen to the river
Sing sweet songs to rock
My soul, I pull into
The parking lot, pull the
Monstropoulously great Maureen Owen's Erosion's
Pull out of my bag,
Open at random, read Fare
Ye well      Fare ye well
I love you more than
Words can tell, and think:
Maybe there's only one verse
To this song, after all ...

First Hay(na)ku

On Thursday, 27 April, Eileen R. Tabios wrote:

“April”--
you don't
define Moi Poetry.

Consider these, my first hay(na)ku, as a footnote/tribute to her for her being so brave as to share her life with us as her father transformed from a man into an owl. I post these less in the name of great art and more on behalf of Kathy, Liora and her family, Samantha, Carole, and ...

“April”--
You don’t
Defeat Eileen’s Poetry.

Nothing
Defeats Poetry,
Which we invented

To
Kick Death’s
Sad inescapable ass.

Look
Up. Higher.
“Whoooo...whooooo...whoooooooo!”

I Went To My Last

I went to my last
Moan-and-groan session, desperately
Seeking new sounds, I spotted
An ad for a mental
Health handbook, I thought ah!
And moaned its title out,
Beauty must be convulsive, saith
A B, well, that sure
Convulsed the hell out of
Me, tang tang tang tang
Tang tang tang / ting ting
Ting ting ting, Walter and
I drove down to Florida,
Stopped somewhere in Tennessee, three
Fingers of scotch said Walter,
Walter! I gasped, your ulcer?
Your puddings? … For Mother, Marguerite,
Someone broke into my car
Last night and stole my …
Music? No, my case files,
My fucking case files, my
Patients’ identities, my name is
Song in Chinese, I’m an
American now, please call me
Pine, when I say happy
I still mean so damn
Glad to be alive, I
Mean the woman in the
Too-tiny tank top, maybe
One-third my age (shades
Of the Green Cabaret!), do
Those computers print? For the
Time being printing is free,
The sun rose like a
Little flower, gray melted into
Green, the little flowers struck
Me less like beauty than
They did like passionate screams:
I want to live, I
Want to eat, I want
To fuck, I want to
Breathe! But maybe that's just
Me, and that Van Eyck,
That Thornton Dial, those candlelit
Caravaggio eyes, that soft-core
Bouguereau, that felt suit Joseph
Beuys, O peaches and champagne,
Our gods are so tiny,
Tang tang tang tang tang
Tang tang / ting ting ting
Ting ting, why didn’t I
Open the blinds, they don’t
Call ‘em blinds for nothing,
And yet … and yet … even
The plastic gnomes were laughing,
Even the plastic gnomes were
So damn glad to be
Alive, the Golden Gate was
Shimmering, Lieber Maler, male mir,
But what? Anything, anything, anything.

The First 40

Of course I’m stealing. Just so you know I know you know: people with whose images I’ve worked, and/or whose words I’ve expropriated (and usually italicized) while writing the first 40 poems of Zhili Byli (“I Sat With A Red” through “Per Eileen's Suggestion I Did”): those who posted portraits of Sam Bloomberg-Rissman at http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/ropeboy/, Chris Drury, Wolfgang Tillmans, Christian Boltanski, Dante Alighieri (tr. the Hollanders), Alan Baker, Cisco Houston, Steve Mitchell, Ishigaki Rin (tr. Leith Morton), Jefferson Airplane, Pocho Hour of Power, Sam Bloomberg-Rissman, Inso Chung, Mi Fei, Deborah Lattimore, Tan Dun, SeenyaRita, dgray_xplane, magarrido, eduiturri, haizeagirre, Beltza Scene’s Vol. 2, anavb, lobo2005, booboo1604, Miss HP, SL Emerick, stoneth, Sarahbelle 1, catamadogma, Finiky, Shari DeAngelo, Melete, Andy Welsh, fabbio, Babeffe, sammytd, Jean Sol Partre, Photophool, Hiroshi Sugimoto, anonymous Mayans, Kiki Smith, author(s) of Gilgamesh, Kuei Chiu, Red Pine, NY Times, Egon Schiele, Thomas Schutte, Chang Dai-chien, Ted Berrigan, Barbara Guest, leosalata, goddess_spiral, josé.goulão, SpatialK, Beyonce Knowles it all, aqui-ali, 7meteor, pindaro, Lil Erna, mathface, ranjit, Sexy Swedish Babe, cpbasilisk, carnefresca, [kren], Luke Harby, catalina, anonymous (collection Robert Flynn Johnson), Maja Vukose, me, Rose Bloomberg-Rissman, the artists in Days Like This Tate Triennial … 2003, Eileen R. Tabios, artists in Pat Thane etc.’s The Long History of Old Age, artists in Nigel Spivey’s How Art Made the World, Banksy, Martin Kippenberger, Christopher Logue, Milarepa (tr. Garma C.C. Chang), Eva Hesse, artists in The Picture Gallery Academy of Fine Arts Vienna catalog, contributors to Frank Warren’s PostSecret, Friedensreich Hundertwasser, Joseph Cornell, Bohnchang Koo, Nobuyoshi Araki, Cy Twombly, William Eggleston, Robert Rissman, Bob Dylan, Philip Whalen, artists in Carlos A. Córdova’s Agustín Jiménez y la Vanguardia Fotográfica Mexicana, Abelardo Morell, Miguel de Cervantes, (tr. Edith Grossman), Joe Pesci’s character in “Lethal Weapon 2”, William Butler Yeats, everyone I stole from while writing Travels to Capitals, Ian Hamilton Finlay, everyone I stole from 1974-2000, Siegfried Giedion, Richard Tuttle, Raymond Pettibon, artists in A. Tucker etc.’s The History of Japanese Photography, Carole Findlay, Jean Arp, the Beatles, A. F. Roque, Man Ray, Robert Adams, artists in Getty pamphlets for Courbet and the Modern Landscape, Agitated Images: John Heartfield & German Photomontage, 1920-1938, and Degas at the Getty, Catherine Daly, John Cage, Louise Bourgeois, Antony Gormley, Linda Kasabian, Ko Un, the Rolling Stones, Ian Seed, the Grateful Dead, Frederick K. H. Haselfoot, Sarah McEneaney, Beth Sibley, Allen Ginsberg, Son House, Richard Long, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Andy Goldsworthy, André Kertész, Louis Aragon, Seung Sahn, Chinul, David Sanger, A. K. Ramanujan, artists in the Orange County Museum of Art 2004 California Biennial catalog; artists in the Double Consciousness catalog, Kawase Hasui, artists in the Jerry Twomey Collection at the Winnipeg Art Gallery catalog, Ben Katchor, “Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey”, Lew Welch. I’ve also stolen words from some of the editors/authors/interviewers who produced books about these artists. If anyone wants to know why, I'll be happy to explain my project.

Per Eileen’s Suggestion I Did

Per Eileen’s suggestion I did
The Death Clock thing, I
Tried my luck: dead already,
Two times out of three,
I found the only way
To stay alive was type
A bunch of lies, all
I could think was what
A relief, in Bardo One
I wrote a song for
My brother who had just
Blogged yesterday I felt like
Toxic waste, the chorus of
Said song went any animal
That bites you, Bob, is
Sure to die in pain,
In Bardo Two I wrote
I am of the universe,
And you know what it’s
Worth, in Bardo Three, well,
I skipped Bardo Three, I
Was reborn as the blossom
Buddha twirled to get Mahakasyapa
Grinning, that was fun for
A minute, anyway time went
By, shit continued to sing,
I kept retitling my picture,
First it was Walking under
The ladder, then it was
Aspects of our lives,
Then One reflection leads to
Another, then No puedo entender
Nada, then I’ll be with
You in a minute, then
Lost in a red world,
And finally On the other
Line, I felt I was
Looking through a window made
Of faceted crystal and though
I could still see the
Yard, the trees, the
Roofs, the birds, the
Phone and power lines, the
Jets caught in the holding
Pattern, and beyond them the
Obviously endless-if-you-don’t-
Know-your-standard-model-hot-
Big-bang-cosmology sky, everything
Was broken now into strange
Configurations that somehow made me
Want to sing death to
All those who would whimper
And cry or to whimper
And cry, instead of sitting
On the bench I just
Stood there staring at the
Crack in the sidewalk and
The wall of dirty brick,
I sat next to one
Of Meatloaf’s backup singers on
The flight home from New
York City, wonderful woman, but
She’d never heard of Wilson
Pickett, she’d, never, heard, of,
Wilson, Pickett, I was stunned
When I realized I’d been
Looking at a waterfall when
I thought I’d been looking
At the trunk of a
Tree, O spirits of the
Ancient world, walrus, owl, unnamable
Thing, I sat in a
Chair and looked out on
The city, 10,000 stale sandwiches,
10,000 time clocks, 10,000 sorrows,
10,000 dreams, Sam snapped a
Picture of a light bulb,
Quoted Araki, if you are
Going to change your life,
You need to change your
Man, change your woman, change
Your location, if you want
To change your photographs you
Need to change cameras, changing
Cameras means that your photographs
Will change, a really good
Camera has something I suppose
You might describe as its
Own distinctive aura, I thought
There are some things you
Just can’t change, I decided
To go after the impossible,
I decided to fly, after
I won my medal I
Raised my black-gloved fist
And said no way, at
Miyajima I got 5 minutes
Peace, at the Asian Society
Kwannon held the baby, yes,
It’s true, I confess, I
Was one of the two
Frightened men who decided to
Throw a shopping bag filled
With explosives over the wooden
Hoarding of a construction
Site, but if you expect
Me to give up the
Other guy ...,  I sent Dave
My address so I could
Serve as a reference, that
Beautiful woman in front of
The yellow curtain: my hero,
My daughter, I took a
Slug of chrysanthemum tea, I
Rose the wide surf, apparently,
And I was good at
It, but I couldn’t do
Anything the way Billie could
Sing, and you know what?
That didn’t bother me, I
Walked the path with you,
You walked the path with
Me, O spirits of the
Ancient world, was it you
Or them or me? For
3 unforgettable days everyone I
Talked to had beautiful naked
Eyes, the 4th day, of
Course, I wrestled the usual
Boring ridiculous self-generated beast,
Later I stood in the
Falling snow amid the tall
Sleeping trees, O tattooed stone
And sinew face, Bob wrote
Back you’re just so great,
I love you, then it
Was time for the Fourth
Bardo, the realm of the
Stay-Awake-Atorium, that was
The yeah, we got totally
Lied to by our album
Covers phase, but that passed,
And eventually I learned the
OK ways to stay awake,
And it was on to
Something very much like this
Life, and I heard a
Voice saying this is
All you get, and then
There was a second voice
Saying that's / twice as much
As I could ever hope
For, and a third voice
Replied you can have the
Whole thing, with fur covered
Pillows, at the same price.

Beginning With Lines By A K Ramanujan (For Liora)

As people who appear in
Dreams are not themselves, the
Horses are not horses in
The Chinese painting that prance
Out of the walls to
Trample the flowers in the
Emperor’s garden night after night,
But I think the rain
That fell on First Avenue
While we were sleeping might
Really have been rain, and
The man in the yellow
Safety vest standing with the
Man in the black hoodie
By the yellow Mack truck
With the flashing lights might
Really be a man, or
At least as real as
I am, looking out the
Window, 7 a.m., 22 April,
Watching uptown traffic (still fairly
Light), the walk/don’t walk
Sign, and the Turkish flag,
But I can’t be sure
About the honking horns,
As the horns, and it’s
Not just word association, remind
Me of the wedges of
Migrating birds, who seem always
Always to have just passed
By, which reminds me of
A poem I read last
Night: yes, it’s true that
For a while this body
Seems to be my body,
At least a billion nerves
Seem to end in something
Called Me, but the breath
That passes in and out,
Day and night, to whom
Does that belong? When I
First showed you this poem,
The ending was way too
Easy and way too cheap.

Crissy Field, Shorebirds Standing In

Crissy Field, shorebirds standing in
The shallows, silhouetted by the
Setting sun, same sun that
Rises on the sea of
Bodhisattvas, same sun that shines
On the cracked and mottled
Surfaces of plaster walls, same
Sun that shines through the
Dirty windows from the space
Outside the Pompidou, same sun
That shines on us all …
Shorebird standing on a rock,
Crying and crying, rock and
You reflected in still water,
Everything reflected but your call …
O pure white screen in
An empty theater … As I
Worked on this piece I
Was reminded of a saying
They have in India: ‘What
We call the world is
An accumulation of dust’, I
Wonder how many stories the
Almost invisible traces of dust
Can tell … a bright red 
Arrow painted on the ground …
10,000 greens as we drift
The delta, the ripening, the
(Who said ripeness is all?) …
The slow midnight shutter recording
The tracks of stars … ivy
That clings tenaciously … neat stacks
Of styrofoam … the photo is
Captioned Tour Boat Seen Through
The Suspension Cables of the
Golden Gate Bridge but what
Gets me is the wake,
The foam, each bubble … hunting
Dogs … mountain lions … the dust
Is in motion … the blue
Is in motion … the bridge
Is rocking up and down …
The lights and the bells …
Just try to step twice
In the same whatever … just
Try to count the cracks
In the walls … I was
There, I remember that weather …
Stains you can't wash out …

One Bow (For Ko Un)

Because she’s Kwannon in disguise
K brings me an apple.
I put down my book
Of Ko Un’s poems and
Eat. It’s a good apple.
The man who sells us
Apples has a withered arm.
So what? Nothing. I just
Wanted to tell you. Birds
Sing. The ceanothus blooms. It’s
A kind of blue or
Purple. What else? Nothing that
Isn’t Spring. The wind is
West-southwest, 13 miles per
Hour. Big fat clouds roll
In, delivering the mail. The
Mailman has no eyebrows. It’s
As the poet said. So
What? Nothing. It's getting cold.
I just wanted to tell you.

I Took A Breath And

I took a breath and
A breath and a breath,
I walked til midnight and
The lunar eclipse, I rolled
A stone amid stones along
A stone path, I dipped
My palm in mud and
Pressed it where the print
Wouldn’t last, I did things
With snow that would be
Gone in a flash, I
Took a breath and a
Breath and a breath, I
Tied myself to everyone I
Wanted to love with thin
Yellow thread, I found twelve
Glass jars and filled one
With tears, I realized I'd
Never be able to see
What Alice saw so I
Saw what I saw instead,
I dipped my palm in
My blood and pressed it
Where the print wouldn’t last,
I took a breath and
A breath and a breath,
When I took that girl's
Picture 50 years ago I
Thought I was taking a 
Picture of ancient stone steps,
Those two guys? I took
Their picture in ‘32, now
None of us are left,
I tied myself to everyone
I loved with smiles that
Were stronger than thread, the
Trees and I left shadows
In the grass, from now on
There won’t be a gesture,
Nor a blink of the
Eye, which doesn’t commit me
Irrevocably, which doesn’t change the
Course of my life, I
Took a breath and a
Breath and a breath, I
Piled stone on stone and
Built a wall where the
Water would rise until my
Work disappeared, I threw red
Sand into bright blue air,
I wrote everything I knew
In ice though none could
Read the script, I did
Things with stones but a
Tiny lizard did the rest,
I took a breath and
A breath and a breath,
Only don’t know, that’s what
The blank page said, I
Realized I’d never be able
To see what my camera
Saw so I let it
See instead, only don’t know,
I felt it to the
Depths, the river appeared still
And the sun frozen in
Place but the boat continued
To drift, I took a
Breath and a breath and
A breath, those days I 
Painted in browns, yellows and
Little hints of red, I
Stood amid strangeness and tried
Not to pretend I could
Make sense of the mess,
I stood amid clotted knots
Of strangeness til the end, 
But I smiled a lot,
Dan-o-jom-su, sudden
Enlightenment followed by gradual practice,
I took a breath and
A breath and a breath.