Georgia O'Keefe Talks With Karl Marx Over Cappucino 
	at a Point Equidistant from Sante Fe and Manchester 
	(New Hampshire) and Untitled.





      			Tenney Nathanson


          		       [NATH05.01]


_____________________________________________________________________
NATH05.01 and RIFT05.01 copyright (c) 1995. See below for full notice.
_____________________________________________________________________


  
  
  
GEORGIA O'KEEFE TALKS WITH KARL MARX OVER CAPPUCINO  
AT A POINT EQUIDISTANT FROM SANTE FE AND MANCHESTER (NEW  
HAMPSHIRE)  
  
three skies under a tree  
Upon a solitary acre  
                                 like the body in interpretation  
and  
a cactus isn't political  
bes political  
he said, scratching an armpit and the severence pay  
is retarded.  Your mother  
Attention of passerby  
they--him  
twenty-four years ago come April  
burst stars and suffering  
and the dazed light streaming into its future  
whence it comes for you like a dark arm in a dark sleeve of  
        cloud.  
"Tack into the wind which is windswept."  
Your heart in the body I would imagine from the inside,  
         processes scudded by  
        blood, ducts and rhythms.  But why?  
She had a parakeet.  
So the personal /is/ the political  
And this one is a grandmother  
or a series of them they died with some frequency to be  
        replaced by ones of different, usually gaudier colors  
in the lapsed cage with the sheet-bedecked couch beside it.  
Wheels, rollers, spindles and shuttles are now propelled at  
        increased and increasing rates; fingers must be  
        quicker and defter in their movements to take up the  
        broken thread, for, if placed with  
        hesitation or carelessness, they are sacrificed  
green's green apogee  
While in visionary space  
the arm retarded in its sleeve  
like sleep comes to an unworthy population  
in Cinemascope and Thx.  
The great advantage of the machinery employed in brick  
        -making consists in this  
when it is finished it will end  
the employer is made entirely independent of skilled  
        labourers.  
The word is retracted.  
  
1.  
They asked what's it about?  Hmm.  
the blue cloud comes scudding along on its ass  
retching merrily along it sweeps up sects and derbies  
O you who enter the gates of the golden arches of Carnak  
whether there's any such thing know only too well.  
Where Macdonalds sits is the head of the table  
That's all the difference between them and me  
I don't know what I am saying  
But as the Lizard said to Alice:  
  
1.  I am 38 and discovered the nudist lifestyle last summer.  
        Never in my life have I felt anything that feels so  
        good and natural.  My girlfriend, who was  
        apprehensive at first, finally went with me.  Now,  
        together we enjoy our place in  
        the sun.  I wish I had found this lifestyle sooner.  
  
This policy does not cover:  
        (a) loss caused by act of declared or undeclared war;  
        (b) suicide or attempt thereat while sane or insane (in  
Missouri, while sane); or  
        (c) injuries received while making a parachute jump  
which is for the purpose other than that of saving your  
life.  
  
Dead Mom Gives Birth in Coffin  
  
3.  Do you care enough to know?  
  
2. Wear nothing commoner than Snow -  
   No Ornament, but Palms -  
  
3. frugal underwear and frugal /in/ underwear  
  
4. have left no addresses  
  
4.  Jed had been wrestling with the python now for what  
seemed an eternity.  A mental python--not one of the seven  
deadly sins, exactly, but something (he felt) even deadlier:  
that he couldn't name it only added coils to its ferocity.  
The python, grinning like the Beave confronting Wally with  
the wrong picture of mother, opened its huge, unhingeable  
jaws  
  
5. Grave diggers hear baby's cries as coffin is lowered into  
tomb!  
  
Yes, without obligation.  I would like more information  
about your Pre-Need Funeral Plans  
  
Space aliens put man under giant microscope  
  
7.  Another solution for "Missing Out in L.A." would be  
either to go to a topless bar or hire a strip-o-gram.  
  
I understand these plans are designed to spare my family  
needless grief and expense.  
  
8.  Yet another moment, o tender waiter.  
    What I assume you shall assume.  
    And of these one and all I weave the song of myself.  
  
8.  'At a rolling-mill where the proper hours were from 6  
a.m. to 5.30 p.m., a boy worked about four nights every week  
till 8.30 p.m. at least . . . and this for six months.  
Another, at 9 years old, sometimes made three 12-hour shifts  
running, and, when 10, has made two days and two nights  
running.'  A third, 'now 10 . . . worked from 6 a.m. till 12  
p.m. [sic] three nights, and till 9 p.m. the other nights'.  
'Another, now 13, . . . worked from 6 p.m. till 12 noon next  
day, for a week together, and sometimes for three shifts  
together, e.g., from Monday morning till Tuesday night.'  
'Another, now 12, has worked in an iron foundry at Steveley  
from 6 a.m. till 12 p.m. [sic] for a fortnight on end; could  
not do it any more.'  
  
9.      I see the butcher and the baker.  
        I see the candlestick maker.  
        All these I see and am . . . . I am the candlestick  
                maker  
        I am the bread the bleeding hog the candle.  
  
10.  Please don't misunderstand.  This lifestyle is not for  
everyone.  I myself cannot eat sushi.  
  
10.  Here is an unctuous piece of tripe  
Wrapped in banana leaves in the traditional fashion  
And here next door is a spaceship with a modular kitchen in  
        the space capsule  
Wrapped in leaves of the tamarind tree with the poet sitting  
        beneath it O happier star  
Naiads shooting down the Colorado on inflatable rubber rafts  
        bringing bad tasting water to Tucson at great  
        expense, like kyaks in that Coors commercial,  
        remember? where the water was pure and the girls  
        were spume, pure spume, being sure to spell it  
        properly--  
Yet there is some integrity in the prickly pear  
shadow my ass.  Or as Pound said of the Oliophant:  
The word is not obscure to those who have /seen/ one  
And as Stein said: nice if you're a village.  And that's how  
it was with the prickly pear, in southern Arizona  
        in May 1992, the yellow flowers not bursting so  
        much as--well:  
we shall not express the expressible.  That's my  
        dateline  
what's yours?  
Meanwhile pick up that gum wrapper  
and deliver those fleurs.  
  
But it was time to get back to some serious work in the  
        poetry biz, inventory mounting up like hollow men  
        dancing round cacti in the mind of T.S. Eliot and  
                his overly attentive readers: LIFO, FIFO, as long  
as it's good to its mother.  Or as the village  
        explainer said to Alice:  
  
12.  Ancient Ways of Healing: Traditional, Spiritual &  
Intuitive Healing Methods  
  
13.  Healing with Herbs  
  
13.  Real Estate: Invest in Real Estate Tax Liens  
  
15. General: Cult TV  
  
12.  
        Picture of Poe as Drunken Devil Called All Wet  
By Mary Pemberton  
The Associated Press  
        Baltimore--Edgar Allan Poe's image as a death-obsessed,  
despairing figure has obscured the legacy of a hard-working  
journalist who was the Stephen King of his day, says an  
expert who wants to rehabilitate the author's image.  
        "Poe was not the drunken, dope-addicted, crazed maniac  
that he has been depicted in the past," said Jerome.  "He  
was a dashing man--a poet, with an air of refinement."  
        The practice was so common in Poe's time that coffins  
came equipped with bells and flags so the "dead" could alert  
the living if they woke up.  
  
18.  When in disgrace with shit on the nation's face, fifty-  
two dead in Los Angeles but we must respect law and order  
assuredly making it a very good thing indeed that University  
of Arizona President Manual T. Pacheco encouraged employees  
to deplore the violence but forbad faculty from deploring  
the Simi Valley jury's verdict.  Two weeks later Dan Quayle  
blamed the whole thing on Murphy Brown anyway, she having  
had a t.v. baby out of wedlock and moreover having liked it.  
Fifty years later you won't know this but you can look it up  
and it will be history.  Or ever so many generations hence.  
There you will also learn that Dan Quayle once really was  
Vice President of the United States.  What did he go on to  
become?  Closer yet I approach you.  Just stick to the facts  
ma'am.  Bootless cries, "and look upon myself, and curse my  
fate."  
  
18.  It is more likely, however, that Neil was born with a  
predisposition toward becoming gay, and his mother's strong  
wish for a girl contributed to his preference for doing  
"little girl" activities rather than "little boy" activities  
during his childhood.  
        Thus, Neil's ultimately becoming gay was a combination  
of nature and nurture.  
  
19.  VARNER, Ark.----Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton left the  
Democratic presidential campaign trail yesterday to return  
home for the scheduled execution of a brain-damaged cop  
killer.  The execution was delayed for 50 minutes because  
medical personnel weren't able to find a suitable vein in  
which to inject the solution, prison spokesman David White  
said.  Asked if he wished to make a final statement, Rector  
said, "Yes.  I got baptized and saved."  The execution began  
at 9:50 p.m. CST, (8:50 p.m. Tucson time) and Rector was  
pronounced dead at 10:09 p.m. (9:09 p.m. in Tucson) by  
Lincoln County Coroner Jimmy Hawkins.  Clinton denied  
clemency to Rector on Thursday.  Rector was the first black  
inmate executed in Arkansas since 1960.  The execution could  
help Clinton distance himself from his party's soft-on-crime  
liberal image, said some political observers in New  
Hampshire, site of the nation's first primary, on Feb. 18.  
"I think the death penalty is a trump card for being tough  
on crime," said Kimberly Cook, president of New Hampshire  
Citizens Against the Death Penalty.  
  
20.  Thank you for steering that gentleman toward another  
solution, and allowing me to dispel some misconceptions  
about the nudist lifestyle.  Abby, you may use this letter  
as you see fit.  
  
23.  swine, spiders, snakes, pests, mad-houses, prisons  
without more  wonder than the blind man feels who is  
gradually restored to perfect sight  
  
24.  For over 15 years, this class has taught hundreds of  
people interested in raising their vibratory levels of  
consciousness in the psychic, holistic healing and  
metaphysical arts.  A new subject and new speaker each week  
covers the phenomena of metaphysics and health as taught by  
professionals and evolved teachers in their special fields,  
such as reincarnation, love, soul, dreams, meditation,  
holistic arts, healing, E.S.P., U.F.O.'s, out-of-body  
experiences, meditations and readings, etc.  Held at Free  
Spirit Chapel, home near Pantano and Broadway.  Pre-register  
by mail or phone.  622-0170.  $6.  Love donations accepted.  
  
22.  an angel looking as though he is about to move away  
from something he is fixedly contemplating.  His eyes are  
staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread.  
  
24.  Dear Abby: When you announced to "Neil's Aunt" that  
Neil's becoming gay was a combination of nature and nurture,  
it took my breath away.  Where was your usual sensitivity  
and intelligence?  Parents of gays and lesbians have heard  
this nonsense all their lives.  So, when they learn that  
they have a homosexual child, they agonize over their role,  
perceiving it as a family tragedy.  My second son is gay.  
Never during my pregnancy did I pray for a daughter, nor did  
I foster gayness with "little girl activities," or  
inappropriate clothing or behavior during his childhood.  He  
is gay because God made him that way.  My husband and I  
first felt confusion and guilt when our son came out to us,  
but with the help of other parents of homosexuals, we came  
to understand that our son's sexual orientation is normal;  
it is our culture's fear and hatred that are perverted.  
Abbey, please remind your readers about the Federation of  
Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, a group of loving,  
supportive parents who can help anyone who is troubled about  
a family member's homosexuality.  There are P-FLAG chapters  
all over the country, and meetings are free.  You may use my  
name.--Rita Buckley, Newbury, Calif.  
  
25.  
  
                          --Angel,  
Be silent in your luminous cloud and hear  
The luminous melody of proper sound.  
  
27.  Dear Rita: I have always believed that one's sexuality  
is not a matter of choice--that homosexuals, like  
heterosexuals, are born that way.  I apologize for my lapse  
in judgment in buying that "nature-nurture" theory.  I knew  
better and am profoundly contrite.  World B. Free  
  
21.  There is no document of civilization which is not at  
the same time a document of barbarism.  
  
28.  
It is possible, possible, possible. It must  
Be possible.  
  
Q.  My brother had a vasectomy 10 years ago and was told by  
his surgeon the procedure was successful.  His live-in  
girlfriend is now pregnant.  Could he be the father?  
A.  Hmmmmm.  This is a challenging question to which I can  
only give a general answer.  
  
22. But a storm is blowing from paradise; it has got  
caught in his wings with such violence  
that the angel can no longer close them.  This storm  
irresitsibly propels him into the future to which his back  
is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows  
skyward.  
  
30. So it came sliding along like a turbine, but with  
frills--underpants, panties, and bells--and the batter  
prepared according to her recipe was duly blended, ladled,  
and baked.  Strike three.  It was raining on Capitol Hill,  
like a hanging curve, and in it, where the ship of state, a  
paper boat on an inland sea menaced by leech gatherers, was  
moved by the invisible arm of Adam Smith and his heirs, who  
are legion.  Not that there was an alternative when the  
phone rang.  The Soviet Union, of course, had long ago  
discredited itself, and murdered millions, and thrown up its  
hands and dissolved (while trying to wash them), and  
democracy, as my father had said, was the worst system on  
earth except for all the others.  Despite the predictable  
air of cheap irony I mean everything I say.  This didn't  
mean that there was nothing to worry about, but it meant you  
could read a book with a good conscience even if it was  
fiction, even escapist fiction, since there was no escape  
and you knew and admitted you were caught in the illicit  
willowy webbing a few feet about Reagan's non-existent  
safety net, at a fairly reasonable income and comfort level  
though still underpaid and in debt and besides, were in some  
way leading people to challenge their settled beliefs in  
your work, or in theirs.  Time, as Ashbery said in  
"Variations, Calypso, and Fugue on a Theme by Ella Wheeler  
Wilcox," farted.  
  
Nudist Colony Convert Advises Man Looking For Eyeful to Look  
Elsewhere  
  
Clinton, Wife to Answer Rumors of His Infidelity on "60  
Minutes"  
  
Days of Roe vs. Wade Nearing End, Foes Say  
  
                Confessed Serial Killer  
        Says First Victim Raped, Tortured Her Before She Shot Him  
A prostitute who admits killing seven men on Florida  
highways over a two-year period testified yesterday that the  
first one raped and tortured her before she managed to get  
her gun out of her purse.  Aileen Wuornos said Richard  
Mallory, who had picked her up, tied her to the steering  
wheel of his car and sodomized her.  She quoted him as  
saying "You're going to do anything I want you to do, and if  
you don't, I'll kill you."  "I thought to myself, I got to  
fight or die," Wuornos told the 12-member jury in a soft  
voice.  She has told investigators that she later shot and  
killed six other men who picked her up for sex and then  
became violent.  
  
Please give my love to Marx and the kids.





_______________________________________________________________

   
  
                                        UNTILTED  
  
  
  
Crossed out shells in turbid water  
now it's cooked:  
raw     this is just to say  
drest in his shroud    for twenty years  
with briefcase aloft in hand  
staring at my reflection in the other book.  
promotion's turbid pool  
the soldier camped my face  
I'm sorry  
I have said that the soul  
pure binarism  
and as to you o life  
now I wash the gum my words itch  
but the little man  
gain fast on the pumps  
I broke him in two like wood  
clinging to the shore  
because he was wood  
nothing but texture, tissue of lies as Walter Benn Michaels  
        said to Pat stop clinging to the shore  
A plank is beside your head  
the leeks gain: fast! I typed the keels o! laughingly!  
impassive with your hair drest black and dash You laggards  
in his shroud  
one and all drest  
in his blue shroud  
1/0  
and sing myself  
only in revision  
  
1.  
  
Section 34: taxonomy of body parts in the poetry of, guess  
        who, Walt Whitman  
simple tools imbued with pathos as American industry passes  
        over from the guild organization and craftsmanship  
        of the artisan republican era into manufacture,  
        then into the full-blown factory system, all of  
        which the poetry records.  
I can name a hundred tools in a single line what am I?  
A hundred lovers.  See Wilentz, Erkkila, Thomas.  Or Charlie  
        Shiveley.  
Craftspersonship.  
Viz., the blown hair of the seas, fuzz and moss of arctic  
        pubis  
Huge boreal nights your body arched across  
the sky  
binding the polis together or ripping it apart  
while the body in dreams is 99.5% air at 4:40 p.m. on May 2,  
        1992 in Tucson, Arizona (this is a regional art)  
        not water, or water:  
June 26, 1993, 3:14 PM  
(dateprint) (timeprint)  
flux, ripple, and recoil.  
Charles said thirdbaseperson.  
Thus in his high decorum he is wise.  
  
And hence to R. Mutt  
likewise arched     we cannot say so.  
I paean North Korea.  
Little traceries of your death here and there  
who say so.  
  
it was still impersonal: water, linoleum, air,  
passion part of the motive social force, binding the polis  
        together by ripping it apart  
  
like the truisms of the age  
in a bed with wind  
produced as an effect of culture  
  
: a beauty never seen    weeping softly  
at the end of part one  
which is the the end of part one  
  
2.  
  
Yes it will change the way we write  
and it will change your culture  
but Melanie is it political?  
  
Wipe your T-Bills  
  
I'm talking to you Melanie  
  
The way mud sticks to wind  
  
Because when it came out with rags all over its face,  
mustard seeds, carroway, and coaldust,  
It hum-drum and extraordinary all at once like you a  
        billboard  
still talking to you: please get your billboard out of my  
        face I want to be visionary  
In another way: with built-in retractors and the speaker  
        system adjusted to produce the sound of 220  
        cornets and drums  
reproducing them  
Under a huge mock-up of the Indy 500  
as men in spandex shorts run a brisk 220  
not like those who lost (pretty please)  
(just call me Bruno)  
and the devil made a trumpet of his ass  
enhanced value in the new, inflated market where  
V =V^3 (Vegamatic: but it wasn't one): aka Vim, Vigor, and  
        Vigorish  
Roll them diced (California, here we come inside out).  
Hold the seaweed, Walt  
We're at the beach.  
  
Thus had I come to the age  
and will arise and go now  
Uh uh  
He's thinking of beans again  
Shh! The old man's asleep.  
  
Nope again.  
These were symbols of another age,  
he said, rejectamenta really (bits)  
(I say unto you) Getta job.  
I got to my feet and  
The trundle bed fell on my toes, or hideaway or Sleepy Joe I  
        think (it crushed my Sloppy).  (That was in New  
        York--the winch is dead.)  There were beans in the  
        wainscotting (bytes), newspapers from the turn of  
        the century in the wall  
Like an effect of closure  
I mean culture  
like beans in wind.  
But what do you make of it, I want to know?  
mic-mac of mocking birds  
In the land of big mariners  
  
(Tall Paul and Mrs. Paul.)  
  
3.  
  
T-Bills was once the name of the whole darned thing.  
  
4.  
  
The Whitman brothers, Walt and Slim.  
The Everly Brothers, Gypsy Rose Lee and Pip.  
The Wright Brothers, Mickey and Sylvia.  
How do you call your loverboy?  
Potatoes and beans: the breasts.  Hey Loverboy.  
And if he doesn't answer?  
Hey loverboy : Canon Aspirin.  
And if he /still/ doesn't answer? Three by Bruce Lee: Huey,  
        Dewey, and Louie Aparicio.   Come /'ere/ lover boy: a  
        Hispanic, the head in its black girdle.  
Zucchini carbonara. Three by Dan Quayle: potatoe,  
        elementary, that was very good.  A shortstop.  
These are the collected words of Dan Quayle:  
        He said: Our country is only as strong as the family and  
the  
        values they live by.  When the sophisticated folks  
        laugh at those moral values, they are laughing at  
        America itself.  They are laughing at America's  
        greatness.  
He said: 75 percent of the media leaders questioned  
        described themselves as political liberals  
        compared to 27 percent of Americans in general.  
        Only 7 percent said they attended religious  
        services regularly.  44 percent claimed no  
        religion at all.  80 percent said they did not  
        believe homosexuality is wrong.  66 percent  
        reported making more than $200,000 a year.  51  
        percent said they don't believe extramarital sex  
        is not wrong.  "In other words, the majority  
        approve of adultery," he said.  
Three by Robbe-Grillet: a, it, the.  
The Vice-President was less obscure: anti-semitism thinly-  
        veiled, let's not say fascism.  I mean that.  So  
        does he.  And he wants to vote with your feet.  
  
5.  
  
It is ridiculous to reproach chewing gum for diminishing the  
        propensity for metaphysics  
Yours truly, Max Horkheimer  
  
6.  
  
I am watching you  
the individual is immeasurably exalted as an idea while each  
        individual person is convicted of moral bankruptcy  
                by the epigones of disillusioned romanticism  
Yours truly, Theodor Weisgrund Adorno  
  
US Role in World Hot Spots?  Your Views  
  
7.  
  
Who knows but I am as good as looking at you now, for all  
        you cannot see me?  
I'm peering up your dress.  
I am watching you from the occluded window of the big tower  
        invented by Jermey Bentham and described by Michel  
        Foucault  
My name is Tenney Nathanson so Foucault was wrong someone  
        does wield power  
It is incorrect to say it is me.  
Oh no I'm Walt Whitman  
I might not tell everybody, but I will tell you.  
I am not Jeremy Bentham the words you hear are the  
i       nstrument of your liberation and not your  
        oppresssion.  
These words are no instrument  
Who touches this touches  
  
whang dang doodle  
  
It is not that chewing gum undermines metaphysics but that  
        it is  
  
clever elites conspiring to bring about a dubious  
Frisson.  Forget Foucault?  Your views.  
  
7.  
  
We believe that the foremost issue of our time is this: A  
world civilization is emerging.  It will call forth our  
best.  This culture, sustained by a transnational myth  
structure, must be generated with faith and imagination, not  
left to the slogans of advertising.  We are being called to  
an enormous adventure.  
  
The Council on Ideas Is an Operating Program of  
The Gihon Foundation  
  
  
7.  
  
Credo:  
I believe in the following, one and individible, under water  
        and all at the same time:  
I believe that the body is a pet rock  
And I believe that this /is/ the fundamental error of our  
        time.  
But you won't catch me running around acting like Bataille,  
Like Bataille.    The human head in a poll.  
The horror.  
Which is this, and it wants you to tell it what it means:  
Language Poetry: a text that empowers the reader and  
        encourages him or her to come up with their own  
i       nterpretation.  
Your views?  
  
sing 1/0.  
  
8.  
  
Or her own.  
Nevertheless we really were saved by the phallus  
subject verb object  
literally dead on our feet.  
You have some important body parts  
And the way in which they don't add up to making you a  
        person is what I like about them.  
I like you too.  It's just different, is all.  
  
The screen descends.  We climb through it  
Right into the bathtub.  That's the beauty of words.  
and it's our secret (yours and mine)  
about as far behind the screen on which the poem is written  
As the bathing body is behind the picture plane in the  
        darkened theatre.  Your views  
Don't amount to a hill of beans thrust into the foreground  
By the laws of renaissance perspective and violating them  
        all at once.  See, here they are--  
I hold them towards you.  
  
9.  
  
So I am the /Sprecher.  And if you think that just means  
        "speaker"  
you're missing a warp.  
Woof.  Who?  
The dog's at the door  
Who be no dog of war.  
  
10.  
  
So that's how the day at the factory turned out.  
It's true though: production isn't the problem so much as  
        consumption.  
And once you realize it you have to do something about it.  
        You have some responsibility.  You might even be  
        teaching the Japanese a lesson and starving a few  
        third world people by feeding them their wages, or  
        go out to dinner at what's pleasantly called a  
        trattoria.  Still each person can do only so much.  
        Even with a Japanese industrial group behind them:  
        I hear footsteps, you hear backers.  Just say what  
        you think.  But hang onto your Plaque Attackers.  
  
9.  
  
This kind of poetry is not my lifestyle.  
I can imagine poetry being part of my lifestyle, just not  
        like this.  
I like my lifestyle.  
It is one of the things about myself I like the most.  
  
  
10.  
  
He's being less commodified than thou.  
  
Thinking too much about interior third world people.  
  
Like a problem in sexual ethics, a riddle: if your private  
        parts are private, why are they parts?  
  
In each sestina, you have six tries to get the words back,  
        or to give them away.  Which might be part of  
        politics, or a part of a politics, as Wallace  
        Stevens might say  
  
Yep purpled my nail in blood of innocence  
  
a line you would do better to erase