Condition Zebra

 

Tell us again how the power of ten

Bellows the fire-seed and kindles the ken.

 

“Set Condition Zebra!” he heard the man

The Captain scream, aboard the U.S.S.

WASP, CVS-18: an Essex class

Aircraft-carrier, now mostly sub-hunter—

It would also recover manned space-flights

Back in ’66, round the same time word

Came down to mount the chiaroscuro horse.

 

Acoustic signatures below crush-depth

Had sounded the initial alarum,

But now something had brought down the lookouts

From the towers: three visual-contacts

Were spotted hovering in the distance

Out in the middle of the Atlantic—

Talk of impossible redirections.

 

Muttonchops saw and heard all this transpire

From his position at the co-plot board;

An E-3 Petty-Officer First-Class,

Muttonchops (one of the “Admiral’s Staff”

In less eerie times on another ship)

Muttonchops was there to hear when Captain

Gillhouly sounded “General Quarters.”

 

Somewhat out of protocol, Muttonchops

Quickly turned to the portside of the Bridge

And tersely swung around the alidade

Onto the moving lights emanating

From the horizon’s face, as if to make

Some calculation or take measurement

Of an event beyond comprehension.

 

They illumined the ocean beneath them.

Color became something of a question.

For a moment, Muttonchops was neither

Here nor there. Ions seemed to charge the air

That swirled around the NAVY ship, equipped

For far much less than this. Now Muttonchops

Makes for the helm and puts on his hard-hat!

 

 

“Set Condition Zebra!” he heard the man

The Captain scream, aboard the U.S.S.

WASP, CVS-18. Gillhouly’s play

Was to send out two CH-53

Helicopters (Sea-Stallions, they call ’em).

Gillhouly ordered two Sea-Stallions ride

Into the lights that had troubled their sleep.

 

As when a smoker finishes her butt

Down to the filter, then cocks a finger

And flicks it a-flight, mirthfully firing

Spent embers to the night, so too did these

Lights look as they ascended from the fray,

Massy, large and round, then winking to nill

In quite psychedelic changes of scale.

 

The hooves of the Stallions chopped at the air

Abashedly, as they made their return

From their useless charge into the margins

Of science and the known world. Gillhouly

Banished the Quartermaster from the Bridge

And intended a gap in the ship’s log,

When he called the pilots over to him.

 

“Did you see anything?” he demanded

Of the near-catatonic pilots. One

Lowed: “We got close enough to see markings.”

Positioned in the helm, Muttonchops was

Near enough to hear their conversation

And forever inscribed hieroglyphics 

Of his own, demarcating spectacles.

 

Were these as those seen by the Genoese

From the decks of the Santa Maria

The night before landfall, ‘wax-candle flames

Flickering’? Or that which on November

Eleventh, ’72, evaded

Norwegian torpedoes and depth-charges

For two weeks, escaping the Sögnefjord?

 

Muttonchops steamed ahead to Rhoda, Spain,

Leaving cigar-shaped thoughts in the ship’s wake.

 

Perhaps this is all very credible . . .

I have it by word from the principal.

             Condition Zebra

 

Tell us again how the power of ten

Bellows the fire-seed and kindles the ken.

 

“Set Condition Zebra!” he heard the man

The Captain scream, aboard the U.S.S.

WASP, CVS-18: an Essex class

Aircraft-carrier, now mostly sub-hunter—

It would also recover manned space-flights

Back in ’66, round the same time word

Came down to mount the chiaroscuro horse.

 

Acoustic signatures below crush-depth

Had sounded the initial alarum,

But now something had brought down the lookouts

From the towers: three visual-contacts

Were spotted hovering in the distance

Out in the middle of the Atlantic—

Talk of impossible redirections.

 

Muttonchops saw and heard all this transpire

From his position at the co-plot board;

An E-3 Petty-Officer First-Class,

Muttonchops (one of the “Admiral’s Staff”

In less eerie times on another ship)

Muttonchops was there to hear when Captain

Gillhouly sounded “General Quarters.”

 

Somewhat out of protocol, Muttonchops

Quickly turned to the portside of the Bridge

And tersely swung around the alidade

Onto the moving lights emanating

From the horizon’s face, as if to make

Some calculation or take measurement

Of an event beyond comprehension.

 

They illumined the ocean beneath them.

Color became something of a question.

For a moment, Muttonchops was neither

Here nor there. Ions seemed to charge the air

That swirled around the NAVY ship, equipped

For far much less than this. Now Muttonchops

Makes for the helm and puts on his hard-hat!

 

 

“Set Condition Zebra!” he heard the man

The Captain scream, aboard the U.S.S.

WASP, CVS-18. Gillhouly’s play

Was to send out two CH-53

Helicopters (Sea-Stallions, they call ’em).

Gillhouly ordered two Sea-Stallions ride

Into the lights that had troubled their sleep.

 

As when a smoker finishes her butt

Down to the filter, then cocks a finger

And flicks it a-flight, mirthfully firing

Spent embers to the night, so too did these

Lights look as they ascended from the fray,

Massy, large and round, then winking to nill

In quite psychedelic changes of scale.

 

The hooves of the Stallions chopped at the air

Abashedly, as they made their return

From their useless charge into the margins

Of science and the known world. Gillhouly

Banished the Quartermaster from the Bridge

And intended a gap in the ship’s log,

When he called the pilots over to him.

 

“Did you see anything?” he demanded

Of the near-catatonic pilots. One

Lowed: “We got close enough to see markings.”

Positioned in the helm, Muttonchops was

Near enough to hear their conversation

And forever inscribed hieroglyphics 

Of his own, demarcating spectacles.

 

Were these as those seen by the Genoese

From the decks of the Santa Maria

The night before landfall, ‘wax-candle flames

Flickering’? Or that which on November

Eleventh, ’72, evaded

Norwegian torpedoes and depth-charges

For two weeks, escaping the Sögnefjord?

 

Muttonchops steamed ahead to Rhoda, Spain,

Leaving cigar-shaped thoughts in the ship’s wake.

 

Perhaps this is all very credible . . .

I have it by word from the principal.

AVA

           AVA

         for John Rabczak

I met La Vendler once,
Seven years ago in Sligo.
It happened totally by chance, even
Though word had come down that she was the bestest living critic on the face of the  

Earth.

I had been sent back to my father-land
For the rough-headed kern’s grand forelock tug,
Or maybe to learn the trade.
Certainly not because I had been well-form’d
from toe to top.
Some scraps of poems I had sent along.
What were they?
The metamorphoses psychoses or
Something like that.
Or was it the Book of CancEL(l)ATION?

I had won an award drawn from Leithaus-
er’s MacArthur Fellowship, almost two-
thousand dollars towards the trip.  “T(h)anks a mill-
ion,” as they say.  There’s no tipping, there.

So there I was in Sligo, my first and
Only Time across the Pond.
Dublin had been in(ten)ded, but I stayed
in the West, Shannon to Doolin to Gal-
way further north, eventually to Sli-
      go.

And eventually to Drumcliff, to see
That quaint ancestral bone-house of the lord.
Holidayers with northern accents streamed
Through all day. 
Casting a cold eye of observation
On the grave for hours, from afar,
but not too far.
A father bribes his daughter—(or was it
his son?)—with a euro: to memorize
the epitaph, which puzzles me. Very
young, s/he was.

But anyways, to get back to the good
Dame. There was some type of Yeats conference
A(foot), unbeknownst to me, and I took
it as a good omen, planned at(ten)dance. 

Leaving the flyer in the center of
The square, I went to consult “Wild Turkey”
just a few times, prior to the appointed hour.

Now, it turns out, one had to pay a good
Deal to hear the good Dame’s discourse on Yeats.
There was some confusion when my turn came
in the roll.  It turns out you had to pay. 

I wasn’t on the list, but I said, “I
Am the Leithouse-Laureate!” And she
said: “But I'm sure you are.” And that ended
   It
More or less.  Made as graceful an exit
as I could . . . No, had someone photograph
Me with the Dame, as if the evidence
Could be used as some type of currency.

That night, after trying to let myself
be affected by Jorie Graham’s prose,
(They must have been moving as a unit),
For which I was slightly ridiculed on
   Return,
After the reading, back in the Turkey
Coop, I knew that my Pépère

   was gone.

The writing had been on the wall before
I left.  Standing on a chair, tried to get
His fifty-year-old Down-Syndromed daughter’s
Toothbrush down from above, he falls and breaks
His hip.  He had fought at “the Bulge,” hunted
Hitler’s Panzers with a hand-gun, and now,
And now he was crowned with despicable
medical care, tubes or syringe caps left
in the throat. 

A “V.A.” that has committed even greater betrayals to our younger men, now.

The emphysema he’d generated
Since receiving his army rations in
’44—now trebled by the immobility.
Days of drowning.  This was a bloody fluke
Whose splashing even you could not abate,
Walt Whitman: couldn’t grab onto your beard.

So, as I said, the writing was on the
   Wall.
But I knew before I “knew,” formally.

How much, t(h)en,
How much of itself does the mind create? 
Where is the horn that was blowing under
The sunset, forestalling night in the West?
Revive our floating singers from the depths,
And let us see.

 

We’ll raise up Hy-Brazil before our eyes!

Ho!  The Hy-Brazilians breathe again!

I AM the Atlantis and the Zion

 

And come back

To you now,

At the turn

Of the tide.

 

False Starts

“Fake Start to the Absurd Epic”

  

Listen!  Oft in ancient time I’ve heard told

of the prophetic bards, who singing bold

could truly tune the music of the spheres,

allaying all congealed, unnatr’al fears.   

   You there, in futurity, see me fade

As ever present souls, forever made

anew, hover round my unsteady hand

and enter in, so that what had been planned—

(O Homer, Beowulf poet; Hear yea,

Milton and Blake!)—I now resolve to say.

Perverse curse of Babel we must reverse

before our Mother becomes all averse.

   Spirits, come to me and grace my gross tongue:

Let me relate the first battle-song sung

in fit numbers, heroic couplets strong.

   On the first battle-field ever, headlong

into each other rage the ancient ones,

propelling themselves by antique motions.

Occasionally a hand would drop low

to the ground, as their harrier torsos

were not yet upright.  But fiercer than we,

not entirely men, the foes carry

(in that free hand) whatever they can find:

various palm-fitting stones of all kind.

Red-rock and granite to smash skull and bash,

chipped flint and sharp stick to gouge out and slash.

Much smaller in size, these two angered crews,

ready each others’ bodies to abuse.

Who knew what started this dismal conflict

and engendered this terrible verdict?

Probably something of frivolous thought,

of pride, or envy at the other bought.

Past spirits could not yet enter these hands

which fumbled out losers’ bodily strands.

   Yet remains this evil, despite our pow’r,

Ferocious new tools seek more to devour.

Pitiful, unmated ape-women rend

out their hair, wail to the sky, and descend

to those fallen bodies in dreadful woe,

bellowing out a sickening canto. 

 

 

Ooolaley, Oolalley, teety, talk
What, sir, you mock?
When the vermilion smock
lies discarded on the floor,
know that all this war
tatters of flesh, unending day
and the silicon eye overhead
has bled the color from the canvas,
blocked the creator in the moor.