In the Ides of March

Descended from the long line of Tombstone prophets,
the Doc Holidays sic Veras of the Dragoons,
yet separated by one lonesome day, seventeen years
in advance adjusted for the noons and the copper blasts,
we were born you and I in the alleyways.
Early on you called through the mouth of St. John without his hands
via new Byzantium to annoint the death of Marilyn, JFK
a few months later, that familiar iconography of happenstance.
To lose a few of the trails in the rain part of consequence.
Who finds the wooly mammoths out in the desert covered
in the long shadow of their probable Ice Ages
separates them fork-wise from the progeny of Appaloosa
through to the Pinto, a bean colored rag pony
of the Injuns we used to catch like butterflies; the US gov
gives them grants to buy Remmingtons but not the ones
Pegar used to paint down over the flash floods
where we were all born one after the other in Doc's hands.
The horses' feet buried in the flame-like grasses of a hundred
Hopi Mesas. All of the divorces final and worthy
of great canyons of excommunication. The articles of faith
too vast to approach even the expontential. A real long way.
There'll be some splainin' to do.



"I remember my ancient dream,
in which a woman tells me,
"Your house only burns inside, it's
still standing..." Some consolation,"
Alice Notley, some consolation.

Labelling the pages as if they are a personal outline of filth.
At first, standing naked and brushed, reflected in the outlaw
tub which turned my pale skin into a tempting middle aged struggle
of coded names numbered in sevens, beginning and ending
with the same letters O to O and M to M.
The Tropics, Henry, have changed

and Paris is no more than a gesture
taken before a hard right into the police states, and for good.
In those washes the bedouin camped and walked towards finding
me and all the others wishing they had their passports and visas
in order. Hoping for the pope to come in and make it all final.
At last, standing naked and brushed, feet buried
in the flame-like grasses of a hundred Hopi Mesas, one left turn after
the Phoenicia, a valentine ends a seven lettered cycle,

the fields all go fallow.
Everyone in this particular city stomping

towards one aftermath after another aftermath,
after another mammoth sound from the pvc

aquaducts just shy of the Roman, plus,
the sound of their digging. The future fossil record unable
to record anything at all and it seems, the five thousand miles
to sic Vera in the Dragoons is a meaningless equation of the siesmic.
I remember my ancient dream, the fire pattern, the wooly mammoths. I remember this too, a double reactive incindiary device,
twenty eight dominoes to a pack, falling in two directions.
Old Wallace's Smoke Shop, a tropical shirt
borrowed and in the mirror my reflection caught on tape
a burning flowering rose towards the journey seven letters, seven
fallow, seven aftermaths, seven saints

and all the seven popes of the seventh centuries
gone mad, gone straight to mad puffy hells

with the fury of the OK Corral.
Telemachus reads while the women are still at the river,

pounding dry the linens.
Home is where the heart is, it's still standing and the others
buried at the rest stops, flagging each other down.