IM TOO TIRED TO GO ON ANY ANY LONGER

JACK GALMITZ

In this time all we can do

is wear the mask of a face. Our features are too monstrous. Anything would be afraid. The ancient cities are pockmarked collapsed where the dead decay. Dogs sniff them out. Sometimes parts are found. Small arms and legs of children whose childhood was destroyed, dancing boys delighting rich apostate men. Is that whistling in the dark a man or a bomb? Or both? hat do you think?

!laces of prayer are dangerous, as are restaurants, go"ernment buildings and ba#arres. It is bi#arre. !eople are afraid to go out on their streets, like prisoners locked indoors. In this time all we can do is co"er our faces, or what were faces now melted with acetylene torches. This is the age of the deformed. It is all the rage. as wars at home and abroad burn on and on.

The lake meets itself at the shore.

$ocks are smoothed and hard to walk on. The family has waited its hour after lunch before swimming. The younger ones wear inflated tire tubes to keep afloat. The fathers submerge and appear face to face with their children who shout in glee and fear in their throats. They do not speak %nglish. They are happy. The lake does not speak at all. The floats do not speak %nglish. The hamburgers and hot dogs did not speak to them in anything but their own tongue. &or did the wine and beans and plantain at all. The sky's clouds scamper across a language of their own. The women watch from the lawn. They are there to take care so the children and men can be what they are. They are ha"ing fun on their one day off. They dro"e out of the stultifying heat of the city to another state for the first time. It was e(citing and scary. here they came from such mo"ement was not permitted. &aturally they were afraid of the enforcers of the law. )ut the buoyancy of the body, the bobbing tubes on the small tide was a *oy. The radio played music o"er all their sounds+ guitars, bombos, maracas. It swam across the lake. It swam inside of them. It was what allowed them to swim. hen they got home to the torrid heat of the cement streets and their small apartment walls, they were refreshed after all with ad"enture and music could be heard all o"er, e"en in the graffiti that co"ered e"ery wall.

You are the only thing on earth

that I would miss. ,alling you a thing doesn't sound right, but I can't think of another word that co"ers it. I confess that creating a catalogue of one who would be missed is not romantic+ but that's the way it is and you're it. -ook, you know you're not e(actly respectful or sensiti"e of my needs, so let's toss out true lo"e and do with what is. Other things+ like clothes, or books, or treasured sounds, colors, shapes and pets and praise+ I can li"e without. They ha"e outli"ed their usefulness and pro"ed unefficacious. -ook now woman who *ust got her dentures+ you can't be a temptress when you don't ha"e your own teeth. The plates are prosthetics, so gushing words for you would not be fit. It's enough for me that you would be missed. It's true and how many things can you say of this.

The flatness of the surface defies

the weight and dimensions of ob*ects. Instead, it deifies spirit without space and time. That is why the ,hinese ideogram for poem + shi . is a word that needs no other dimension than a surface of bamboo. So it is in all ancient and religious art. /ra"en images remo"ed. Thus we engage in contemplation of ob*ects and sub*ects on the page as if it were a temenos. This is our 0uandary. Although our words are not things, the creation of sacred space is. !erhaps, the kabalistic word Da"arim would help. The term means words, acts, things, and deeds all in one. 1ow wonderful it is.

I did not kill god.

I was busy that day, working at my trade repairing worn or torn shoes. I worked the entire day they made him drag a cross through the way of pain. I was nobody. %"en my wife disobeyed and my son, well, he had little use for me. I had enough trouble already2 my own people threatened to stone me if I didn't keep the Sabbath day holy. I had to work mending shoes, so my family could eat and ha"e clothes. ,ommoners were not guilty of god's death3 lea"e them alone. And bring me some shoes.

I play Hearts on my computer.

It's nostalgic and brings me back to a simpler time. hen I played with people I learned to e(pect repetitious strategies, re"enge and rage. So I play against the computer to a"oid these things. -ately, I'm beginning to sense the three computer players work together against me. I'm not the most stable person, but I'm not so ill as to attribute human 0ualities to machines. I swear these players sometimes trick me so I ha"e to eat the 0ueen. I play the ne(t hand "engefully. I usually lose these games. I'm wondering if any of you ha"e e(perienced the same. If so please let me know+ it would allow me to feel okay.

clutter every
where how to get rid of it or make something of it it s fall ing a part a world once under stood sensible parked a motel' s neon sign in the dark that cars pass off on their way somewhere else

I'm ridden by the sea by the mother lost mere ly al ways look ing for a moor ing will yu be

we spoke
of time as inter"entions in what would be uncompromised readings of the heart's trape#e . the electrocardiography of hori#ontal in a richer shade of green

marginalia
in most cases . e(cess periwinkle sorrel shoots in filtered light successors or may shootings hit 4 runs the inner cities some how appendages the surplus that sustains desire, worth recognition of the 0uestionable presence purity of the once original source

Phil Ochs where are you now

in the crowd, in the crowd !hil Ochs for you I shed tears don't you dare, don't you dare !hil Ochs I'm scared I care, I care !hil Ochs 55 percent despair I'm aware, I'm aware !hil Ochs the mo"ement died I'm not surprised, I'm not surprised !hil Ochs the obblies mo"ed it's true, it's true, I should ha"e known sooner !hil Ochs I don't know what to do li"e in the world that was made by you !hil Ochs I li"e and speak with the dead I know, I took my life with my own hand

The monochrome turns

out to be the sky those specks birds in flight what is it about the sudden flight of birds scared up why do we embrace it the spread of black wings the closing up the e"ening the doom that steps with our e"ery step like a child stretching to place his footprints in footprints large and pre"iously left in the snow by a grown up gone now to warmth or cold

As a boy I sat in the back seat of the car

and looked out the window at occasional cows and horses gra#ing when we were on a "acation 6sometimes they were mating7 and white churches and small towns or the arrangement of stores if we were on a neighborhood outing 4 I was silent and ne"er spoke to my parents up front who were always earnest on the traffic or the yellow lines gla#ed on black asphalt this e(plains my current perspecti"e why I see things framed as in a window 4 paint or write depending on atmospheric pressure 4 why e"erything I place together is pastiche one thing gi"ing way to another not necessarily related e(cept in spatial arrangements I relate from memory 4 associations and whate"er fits the occasion so, I recommend to parents to seat their children in the back seat of their car whene"er they are able or, if they want their children to be like them more, speak to them and sometimes turn and face them

In unclaimed land a forest

I go to rest 4 0uiet there is an old piano untuned O wood warped and faded 4 tree branches encased in ice clatter a tune that I play learned on my own the remaining piano keys chatter it's cold sometimes I take a stick 4 strike the stones in 4 out of the fro#en to add some percussion or crack some forming ice as the soprano

Throw yourself to the sky

like a piece of paper plane hurled by a delin0uent boy it is fall so be be a bowling ball in the gutter rumbling or be nothing at all

In a ird !age
a man singing or chanting people e(changing names 4 sundry sounds in the background 4 foreground the two can be e(changed without potlatch or shame I recei"e the world is there sounds of traffic different, mean nothing but action, louder 0uieter, sculpture in space that remains actions 4 silence as a foray the sound of trees, walls, 0uarries, 0uarters, beggars, night, me, amplified cacti, a feather, water walk, randomly, randomly randomly, randomly on a toy piano a prepared piano, so &ew 8ork ,ity was really built as an a"iary and not a cage

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