tattoos on the Yi King

okay. We stop and inhale,
though this monster breathing apparatus
should've been left in the graveyard.
we knew better. That's an old joke
on me. You got cards and I got cards;
but this created an illusion:
that terrible dream in which
we could see what the other held.
And the balloon grows
not like crosby but like hope, ba-ding
its skin is getting transparent.
Our vowels rising off the register
our fluids running skimpy in these winter months.
I remember surface tension, the formula
escapes me. It's hidden, mutable, terrific.
It's the movie chalicing all the laughter,
taking the chances. Though the horses run,
each lovely in its context, mainly they do not win.
But ~ they don't lose ~

ii.
eXcept we see position
and we throw our tickets down.
You own the Yangtze.
I live in Reykavich.
Win lose die burn.
Imagine a promise that is true,
believe without submission.
No can do. Inadmissable evidence.
System of opposition.
Syntax error.
No blame

iii.
have you seen the tattoos on the Yi King?
he knows less than we do
but is honest in his selfishness
and his ignorance
I throw the three coins
they turn like stars in the dance
never quite finishing the
circle never quite
falling
down

Among the most obscure things I have in the stacks, I can tell this piece references lessons learned from Jacob David Felt, my old friend from St. Louis days who has left the planet now. Jack was heavily into horse racing; he loved horses and he loved gambling. He gave me a great book on the subject, then he stole it back. Typical Felt behaviour. When I first knew him he was great friends with Jack and Nora and a committed marxist-leninist. By 1972 he had turned into a proto-conservative boy. He still smoked a great deal of dope and drank like a fish. He bought dope for John Knoepfle several times in that period when John was doing most of his writing stoned. See the Sangamon Poems for many examples of this disability. I should talk, of course. The piece above evidences psychedelics in both language and logic.

The I Ching (Yi King)is the Book of Changes, a chinese book of fortune telling and arcane wisdom. Many of my close friends were deep into it at one time. What I remember, looking back, is the phrase "no blame" which appeared in numerous readings taken from the Ching. You consulted it with either coins or sticks. I preferred the coins, myself.

Worthy of noting this was written well before I knew anything about computers, so that syntax remark at the end refers to the use of language, as in English, not Basic or C++. Interesting side trip, there.