Avram he always made things mad conversational
And then he stripped them of conversationality
so all I was
Was madness

The Saturday he put cleaver to coconut, then gooseneck,
Like brain to use
It was so sunny I could see clearly
He dropped

me with silence

Into the sea
And left me like flounder.

He pared down
Pear with knife
And hal ved me.
Scaled, gutted, deveined
Like a

mo
bile

of the bottom half

Of afishhetookfromitsmotherocean
Six or seven dots in a row
Connected and

Hanging

    so

  deftly,  

Like he fished me out

Of days lost among wool,
Admiring Kerouac and all his creaks
all his tricks and treats
And good things to eat.
It reminded me a whole lot of that sky
Or was it water? It’s all the same,
In the end blueberry blood steeps
on tablecloth lamb-bone’d open
Butterflied scratch that open-eagled and floating
In the sea.
There, I lost myself
Like sprawling on leather
Griping of history
Gripping with knuckles
But in the end barely grasping anything at all

See, I found this painting I think you’d like, Avram
It’s triangles.
One twine, one pale
Like moon, one rocks dripped deliberate
All chess-like.
See, there’s some math to explain
Nothing but the triangles.
The math makes me feel, Avram
I know more than I do,
But, Avram, they’re just triangles in the end so stop that analyzing.
Drop that knife
intothesea
Before a wholed
Bottle of sea glass
Like a cello player sucked
Into and through his cello.
Or, before a coconut,
Hairy and skulled--to protect
From invaders. Like brain.

It’s important to make the distinction, Avram, to understand
You can never know
More than you know
Sometimes if you search,
Too hard you lose
Sight of land.             It’s beautiful, Avram you must stop forgetting

Because all it boils to is me pointing out something, Avram
To no one in particular but myself

Like a piano player thrown
Through his Steinway
As though it had fallen and crowned him

In the first place:

Avram, I cut go     od

too, Avram

I knife coco nut good too