I lie here next to you, woman body, lovely, 
half sleeping,
I think I really need to wake up

I've forgotten who you are: wife,
girlfriend, anima, blastinglastingtwisting shadow?

Is this strange tender spot 
on the left side of inner space
my eternal soul
or just some kind of nine-dimensional reflection of
the remains of dinner in my stomach?

Is this body lying here in bed
in the Cuzco Plaza hotel
half woozy feverish from altura
listening to the children play around --
oh yeah, I'm on vacation with my wife & 3 kids --
offhandedly scribbling in a notebook
-- why not --
really the nexus of my consciousness
or just a temporary fixation
like when your eye rests on a beautiful girl
and you can't pull it away
but then you do and move on
so the soul tires of its fixation on the body
and floats on on nohow on

My wife is sick,
her stomach squirming,
getting up to walk to the the toilet her own special
luscious pose, buttocks swaying side
to side, is it the bearing of
the Inca queen, is the coldness of her face 
borne of too many years love fury exhaustion battles,
the warmth in her face borne of relations
with suns in me and her and 
the ruling sun

Cuzco, gorgeous city,
laughing at the centuries,
pissing on the millenia,
shitting on the minutes and the geological
forces pushing the Andes up from the chemical
Earth,
I see your light out the hotel window

I always wanted to visit the land
of the Incas, deluded killers, crazy
saints, fascists, climbers, morons of love
universal like the rest of us,

and, tramping through their ruins it's a cliche'
perfect beauty observing my three children
playing on death, on the elaborately fit-together
stone walls of the ill-fated Incas, cities that barely are
visible at all

Fat old ladies curse Quechua at recalcitrant llamas, trails wind
happy from tree to tree, peak to peak, mesa to mesa, mutation to 
mutation, up and down year by year like something or nothing

No matter how far away from home i travel
it's always an illusory beyond

The reality grabs me
and then lets me go again

I am here in the situation
or I am in no situation

No thing
Not
here at all

I imagined visiting here
	in my childhood
Am I in that imagination right now?

Is existence conditional on babies, poems, cities,
	streams of worlds,
	realms of consciousness bleeding,
	ridiculous human solidity,
	logical schemes, fleshly lusts?

Out of bed!  Up!  Tour around!
Altitude sickness be damned!!

Stand on the ruined wall
look over the city of Cuzco
past present and future
the interior of the mind
madness, perfect now, don't
feel at all

On this hill,
Sacsayhuaman wall,
I am nothing
The clouds threaten rain
I am small

Shrinking down to a point
I encompass everything 
	past	>
	present	>	superimposed
	future	>

If I could look into the eyes
of the gold animals
that the Incas created
that were melted down by the Spaniards
I'm sure I'd see something

Clomping down the hill
from Sacsayhuaman
exhausted daughter on my shoulders
tired whining 6 year old behind me
infinite energy source 10 year old in front of me
my wife, soul mate sparring partner lovely brick wall
at my side,
enacting tourism or lifebreath,
flopping down in a restaurant to feed everyone
chicken soup
collapsing in bed into
this weirdness
waking up in the morning
in no time at all
writing this weirdness
these weird words
of no time at all

These words are of no value
my wife is of no value
my dreams are of no value
my kids are of no value
Cuzco is of no value
This hotel is of no value
The Incas are of no value
The Spanish are of no value
Gold animals of no value
The Sun god is of no value
The concept of value is of no value
The concept of concept is of no value
Declaring things of no value is of no value
Declaring things of value is of no value
Love is of no value
Hate is of no value
Religion is of no value
Atheism is of no value
Television is of no value
Hmmmmm is of no value
Mmmmmmm is of no value --
Sex is of no value
Longing is of no value
Contentment is of no value
Vacations are of no value
Work is of no value,
Delirium of no value,
Literature of no value,
Drugs of no value,
Pain of no value,
Truth of no value,
Pleasure of no value,
Strange thought trains of no value,
Lying in bed writing, of no value,
Getting up to eat breakfast, no value,
Staying married, no value,
Getting divorced, no value,
Falling in love, no value,
Deep and eternal warmth, no value,
Surreal beauty of whomever, no value,
Human or divine understanding, no value,
Friendship, no value -- 
And on and on and on
The only thing that's of value is this --

			and it was long ago gone


I will get up from the bed
	and eat breakfast
I will tour around Cuzco some more
	even though it's worthless
I will have strange ideas 
	and pay too much attention to them
I will listen to my children talk
	about penises and assholes
I will grab my wife around the waist and kiss
	and kiss her
	feeling 
	chapped lips on chapped lips
I will look in the mirror and be amazed
	and disgusted
I will fantasize about things
	that are impossible or possible
	that would be hurtful or wonderful 
	if they happened
I will write a great novel
I will build an intelligent computer program
I will baffle my old soul with poems
	that make sense only
	on the other side of time
I will try to communicate
	with other human beings
	and inevitably fail, fail, fail, fail


I will quest moments
when failure is irrelevant

I will look for the Inca sun god
Quetzalcoatl
in the fractal vein folds
of my 2-year old's eyes

I will escape from everything --
freeze on the fire of perfection --
and then the terrible weird world
will slowly claw back again

I will die 
like any other organism
or I will figure out a way to live on
as something else
or the same
or whatever

Knowing that nothing is of any value,
I will create value that has no value,
and live in it and live it for a while,
or ignore it

Hellfire or orgasm, tendrils of mindspace
continue to recreate themselves
with bounty

seeing

	future		>
	past 		>	overlaid
	present 	>

I will roll on in the present

I'm slipping my pants over my feet
	with one hand
	while writing these words with the other

I'm seeking a directness of expression
in which words are life, are really alive

I do 50 impossible things before breakfast,
for example writing these
whacked-out words here at 6 in the morning
lying in this hotel room bed

Realizing that writing this is of no value,
and getting up to eat breakfast is of no value,
I choose to get up
because the kids are hungry

I can't tie my shoes with just one hand
and I need to put them on now
so now this poem will end



	my words fire on
	like broken cannons

	Somewhere near is the
	source of all love