A Mule Will Labor Ten Years...For The Privilege Of Kicking You Once - A Letter Poem With Dreams In't Poem by Warren Falcon

A mule will labor ten years willingly and patiently for you, for the privilege of kicking you once. - William Faulkner

Dear Low,

I'm in a coffee shop cuz cabin bound and bougats. Am updating my mailing (snail mail) addresses finally...and need yours.

Got your message which came while I was asleep till 1: 30 pm could have lain abed hours more but for some horrible rash feet and lower legs needling me a crawling crucifix ferchrissakes cringe.

Up now. And out.

Need fresh air though legs swollen in pants legs throb and burn.
Life-long dreams of being a boy now a man without legs not even stumps the plump folds of fat my bum's become a purple snag knot unsung unused fragged rug burned from drag ass across the floor the door an accusation once refused now willfully unopened.

To yer question as per:

Me mum's good enough, I guess. Her memory serves where she's now at in and out but always somewhere even when not here the face looks clear, old, interior, at peace in this Mona Lisa life, wan at last. Pastoral. Punch line resolved. Resigned to let Nature be Herself and herself ma be as Nature Herself too.

A dream a few months now I was trying to prevent her from crawling hands and knees from an arid this our world long unploughed unplanted field gray red soil no more there anything to grow...she's crossing under, through, beneath a mesh fence into a green green verdant verily world of vines shrubs trees dark and green dependent upon shadow and light and palpable density between limbs leaves beds of them layers many
ageless-now-countless mulcht-nitude. I grabbed her legs to restrain her passing
she bucked like a bronco or bull mule kicked me the face me-I flew back to dead dirt hurt
an agony of sorrow release - her message as Her Self Mother Nature clear brutal:

LET ME GO!

beyond the personal her self Genny no more but green all ever body green

Old man Jung all green now too said 'the most innocent form of life is plant life' and this
she is becoming now moving toward everly

the window where she lives in her chair beside the pane view full of shrubs woods close
and always a half light slanting in over her criss crossing visage stares often one gnarled index finger knot gently poised in air or 'pon left eyebrow or upper lip admonishment or suggestion to needy me regressed to little son fretting the silence the message finger shush to lip be hush-still yield your will and mine to tendril to vine-realm intwined but parsed parchly to make clear here and no-here a now way upon which to vere in between lines human drawn and justly mourned and thank you very very much as I love you it do


To quote Basil Bunting 'Briggflats' to shift his love song for wife to boy/son song to mother elder dear - I know you comprehend the shift a son's rebellion at against fate but for a mule kick fated Be Gone be woe begotten be woe begun spun out and spinning still in dust-field whirls though no blow wind gale in stale air hard to breathe there in all without without her present OUT here with me now:

Fifty years a letter unanswered;
a visit postponed for fifty years.
She has been with me fifty years.
Starlight quivers. I had day enough.
For love uninterrupted night.



In my case 64 years and some months. All lumpish a'pout. And yellowing at all my edges. Some say the soul is ageless but I clearly a body and self am not. To the point a dream plot elaborates: of 3 ago nights an old Allen Ginsberg dead pale poet pale but alive and living in my old Barnardsville century mountain old lap-board-wood-house but now in dream an expanded renovated place clean exspanse rustic large with pine light and him AG white faced gaunt beneath wirey regrown hair wild he's about the place fussy a wife a cranky zen buster
some students about the place living all of us in the new where we all were and me walking around pointing out where nostalgia a young man back then after all when once lived within the old walls where used to be, where the once fireplace/woodstove stood now mid-room empty space a whole large room all around where wall and house end used to be. Allen shuffling about doing things ignoring me I don't notice until near dream's end he says loudly all pointy finger from across the room to make his point more pointedly boney poke prick,

YOU TALK TOO MUCH!

and I knew a'sudden flash he was correct. It hurt but in the-pain-was-good and pressed the point, no, mule kicked me he did 'your own good, ' all that...I sit/sat me down mid-sentence mid room doomed to wonder thundstruck moony tunes fiddles and adagios opining...

Later vagueness but he some others ware talking about 'Warren's suicide' mine own...THAT woke me.

What's he mean. He's AG Tibetan Bhoo-Da Da perhaps it's conscious killing ego off, ego-cide, not done it yet thus my mother's kick and crawl outta the arid personal world no longer yielding life fruit green for her but me, yielding green for me yet? and a conscious undoing finger by finger up what appears to be the me of me...AH, recall now that the new kitchen stove in the new B'ville dreamplace is a woodstove but modernized for cooking and house heating all white porcelain with fine print countrywild field flowers little daisies and such but stylized and spare almost musical patterns thin near-precious baby's breath I with a finger caress and trace the lines they play there and AG talking all the while others about my self-death.

Makes sense. I haven't been consciously death-wishy though legs do now insist scream do something anything to move walk the world whilst can now no longer an ego choice but nature's itch vine-climb creeper up my swollen calves impel me to motion.

I resort to lotion which will not be enough o my darlin' calomine.

AG a zen master/gahroo loo da da intones get to woods while gettin's good.

And there silent be


once again

he to me -


YOU TALK TOO MUCH


Git or git off the pot.

Follow the Itch Path Hanh teach

heed the kick back to barren field

at least try grow corn grain greens

while no longer leaning 'ponst the

crutch of ego, the ergo sum crutch

much a doo bout nothing though

some thing's to be gained in the

fuss the fidget one digit pointing

outward, Whaaaaaaaaaaaaa?



SO. LOW, send me your address again please.


Yours, always, flapping 'is wings in the Void for sure forlorn,


The Alien Corn