Marsh Hawk Review

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Stephen Paul Miller 

  

      It Only Now Occurs to Me How Much John Cage

          Inspired Burt Bacharach

 

This John Cage-Burt Bacharach story is true.

There’s a wonderful French

      horn nearby

                          and the poetry attached to it

                    is intense

      and sweats like crazy

 

                              in a space-time

                              where A.R. Ammons

                                 and Mark Rothko

                                   die on February 25th

                            and George Harrison,

                      Zeppo Marx, and 

                Meher Baba are born nearby on Feb. 25th—

 

                        the surface where

               Burt Bacharach

          and John Cage are

            early ’50s

               New York

                  friends (true story)

 

          when Burt writes a

                   piece for oboe &

                  2 other instruments

  

          and thinking of Cage

 

                feels it too

                     melodious,

 

          and his great French composition

          teacher says, Burt

 

                      never

                    fear being

                                                                                                      

too melodious—

 

and it changes his life

 

          and we too should throw

       out Burt’s beautiful net

 

and not fear making

     too much sense

 

Does no dog lick the wind? —

 

Hillel tells you

 

           “Where there is no

         Man

           Be One”

 

and

 

“The truth is what helps people,

The truth is what makes people

                             Big,”

 

       says Meher Baba.

 

    We’re all like Burt Bacharach

 

    imperceptibly pushed by John Cage

 

    in odd and surprising ways

 

    striking one intricate and sublime

 

    simplicity after another.

                   

      Really

 

This is the first time I've had no head

but that’s the definition of first time.

When you’ve no mind

that is your mind.

In the no-mind mind,

indigestion is a wonderful thing

because it doesn’t exist. 

The universe is a hospice,

a really good one. 

 

I am the flower

on your stem. 

 

     

      Toe Be a Woman

           for Trace Peterson

 

is to be a real man.

To be able not to fight

or fuck is to be a real man

and a real woman. To be gentle

is to be a real man

and a real woman.

Gender is fluid, when it isn’t

Darwinian and, in a sense,

under the hood. But, still, even if

procreative sex functions

through discrete and discernible roles—

“egg roles”—technology

is making even that more fluid

and tech is a product of Darwinian evolution.

And Darwinian evolution

is a slow-moving attention

deficit problem and remedy. Oh,

my love, we are rolling—if being a

real man is being a real woman

this vital paradox crosses our wires

in mutually generative—

another word for gender—

ways, with ADD cures

made of strong energies and wires,

and crossings of satellites and stars

and suns and moons

with all the rocks of Earth

which are sexy too.