Down to verse (647)

Free again

Having closed off streets

And boulevards and alleys

With copters overhead,

They had him.

So he emerged to surrender,

Harmless, unharmed

To find another stead.

Down to verse (646)

New word

It was a history

Of a foggy parent,

Whose chapters

Needed tending

For the time,

Then gentle erasure

After his decease.

Down to verse (645)

Synecdoche

As so many had,

They taken a part

For a whole,

And inflated it,

Never knowing the rest.

Better to have left

Their part for a jest.

Down to verse (644)

The good thing

They had it all in front of them,

But had to change it,

Not take the simple range of it,

But raced to change it.

They had to bend it,

Put their flourish, end to it.

It ended after that.

Down to verse (643)

To the operative

You cannot abide them

Who misuse my words.

Find the places where they mill

Find the places where they stand

To quote me.

Abruptly rip their scripts.

Twist their notes from them.

Tweet of some calumny,

Photo of crudity,

Cite in part, never in full,

Give trail to their silliest errors.

Confound their sites.

Silence their music.

Scrawl over signs.

Collapse their booths.

Above all, when you are through,

Make them love me in truth.

Down to verse (642)

The scholars

They had lived his history

As though they had been there,

But were discovering it

As they went along,

Grafting no theory,

Reasoning instead

Through every cup and crumb

From every table

Of every place they knew of,

To note the dates he wrote his letters.

And so they flourished with him,
Who had flowered millennia before.

Down to verse (641)

Selfsame power

He had trouble seeing

Things remain

Without him,

A reverse Ozymandias,

Who had breathed life

Into them all.

Down to verse (640)

Blasts

The blasts were large.

They always were.

Then winds of experts

Blew and blew

Until the fires cooled.

Down to verse (639)

Said at war

They said they were at war,

But were mostly so

With themselves,

In their expressions

Of propriety.

And so they died

Over sentences

Obscure, oblique,

Paying homage

And giving title
To their hearts.

Down to verse (638)

Tideless

The expanse was dotted

By a ship or two,

Natures unclear,

All the rest water and sky

To the here of his eye,

Save to his toes,

Sand and wave

Around them,

Ending there.

There was no lesson,

Nor high account to hold it,

Nor metaphor to mold it,

To take it elsewhere.

Down to verse (637)

The text 

The text he might take

For aught or naught.

Its words were wrought

For a note or gloss of the time.

Yet nothing came across to mind

For pen or thought.

Derive he might from other’s rhyme,

The text stood still,

A hovel with its own hill,

Then cliff to climb.

Down to words (275)

http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/78366-any-man-s-death-diminishes-me-because-i-am-involved-in

Down to verse (636)

Diminished

The loss of the man,

The man to read with,

Was the loss.

That was the loss.

And it made him mad,

Mad in that the man

Could lose his light

So suddenly,

And that he might

As well.

Down to verse (635)

So clear

It was so clear to him.

If he could maintain

A sober face,

They might believe it.

Down to verse (634)

Truth in front

Were the truth, truth,

It could be preached,

Proclaimed, not argued,

But shown and known,

And thus laid forth

In front of me.

But how in front?

As ears of corn,

Or sheaves of wheat?

Or stacks of bills?

Or balances on a ledger?

Perhaps.

But better as something to rely on.

For how much more would it be,

If it were more

Than a bushel of fungibles,

Even more than a forecast of such,
With no disclaimers?

Down to verse (633)

Shifting

When he began shifting

From the active

To the passive

In his denial,

They knew he was through.

Down to words (274)

Leading with his chin.

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/11/21/502951630/trump-airs-greivances-fields-questions-in-meeting-with-top-tv-news-figures

Down to verse (632)

No better look

The threat

Of self deception

Had left him.

It lay behind,

Not in front,

For what he saw

Needed no tincture.

Down to verse (631)

New editor

Change was her goal,

Additive, not dead,

Applied to that already read,

Addition being, first said,

True and noble.

Editions were to grow.

To this effect, texts were to flow.

Subtractions were, as well,

Applied to what was then to tell,

Lined through, of course, to show their last.

Denied again, her volumes swelled,

Her digests dinning bell to bell,

Repast to repast.

Down to verse (630)

Truth full

He had wondered

What it was like

To be full of truth,

And came to see

It was in his will

To seek no more.

Down to verse (629)

Truth to size

He did not speak the truth,

For they would cut his throat.

But they did it anyway,

Insuring there was none.

Down to verse (628)

Two as one

He was not happy

With the way things were,

Always looked

For the place to lever

Ruts into rifts.

His atonement would be

For leaving one alone,

Even one lone rut,

In which a wheel

Might run itself to market.

For markets were

What he hated most,

Where two, apart from him,

Might deal in peace.

He was not happy

With the way things were,

Always looked for the place

To smooth the rut

For every wheel size,

To pave it, rather, over,

And digitize the yeas and nays

And take the smiles and frowns away

From all the bids and asks.

Down to verse (627)

Visitor

She would come,

His knowing her ways,

Her breath and pauses,

Her goods, gains, ills and losses,

How she fared that week,

And if she cared to speak.

Down to verse (626)

Watchers and thinkers

Among the many facts

Of that day:

He watched the news and comment,

As she her nails tapping,

Waiting to make withdrawals

In the same bank line.

The thinkers were on the screen,

Above the line,

Arguing for the basic nature

Of each of them.

Down to words (273)

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-10/hedge-funds-beware-most-machine-learning-talk-is-really-hokum

Down to words (272)

http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/11/09/artificial-intelligence-mogia-predicts-fourth-election-in-row-with-trump-win/

Down to verse (625)

What he knew

It was not always there,

What he knew.

He’d come to know it

Over years,

Could have said

It came of a sudden

Or in pieces

Depending on…

How he looked at it…

As one, or in pieces.

But he’d wanted the truth here,

Depending on how long

He was willing

To wait for it.

Down to verse (624)

No deal

Introduction failed,

For the crowd,

Trading glances

Handshake romances.

For all of them, it was not done.

A deal was lost, instead of won.

Down to verse (623)

Music lady 

She was bright,

Combed red and blonde

As a Golden Melody.

He’d drawn her tones

When he’d had the dark blues

Of Johnson,

Or the interstices

Of Hendrix,

Then overblown her to clouds,

Springing to light.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/like/311721805623?lpid=82&chn=ps&ul_noapp=true

Down to verse (622)

Deposition

The video showed

What the texts said:

Where she was,

And his assent.

Then counsel asked

How it came to pass

That they went.

But in the main,

There was nothing

Deep in them

That was meant,

And then it slowed,

And then it slowed,

Finally to relent.

Down to verse (621)

Stretch

Asked what he was doing,

He said ‘nothing’,

Though they said he was lying,

For he was counting his change

When he’d answered.

Down to verse (620)

Heart song

All my mind does say:

How could he have been this way,

Yet love me as he vowed

To me,

Yet love me, yea aloud

To me,

Before them all, good company,

Who now do view me,

Far from sight,

Far from that joy

And day’s delight,

And send me notes

To salve their hearts,

And looks apart

That bid adieu forever?

O send me one to sit with me,

If just to say a rosary.