From December 26 2011
Adjunct as a word makes me think of a decoupled train car,
orphaned on the B&M track. I think it means to be contingent upon,
And adjunct is no way to be, a parasitic connection to a campus,
Never among the college of priests, the flamen dialis, never among
The vestal virgins, never tending the eternal flame in the temple,
Never being made, always to schlep from one place to the next,
Condemned to an eternity of self-help seminars as they stretch
another century or decade, or the tailings of the new long one.
When I watch the sky when clear from this bluff, a light falls
And extinguishes itself above the line where the streetlamps
Illuminate the town in a frosty aura to the highway junction 25,
What appears to be a halo independent of a single light
Even those among the combination truck stop corner store.
Where the center is everywhere but the circumference nowhere
Where the rural highway plunges into the country side
A town with a single-staged rocket in the town center
But without the liquid fuel engine in its fuselage
A rocket grounded as the town inhabitants scrambling for work
Unless they have a summer home with furniture draped with bed-sheets
For three out of four seasons with the shutters drawn
Once you can walk on the lake you might as well ice-fish
If you don’t fall in, provided you can drill into the ice.
The section that you pull tells a story but not for as long
As the rings of a redwood lasting two thousand years
But instead of an archeology lesson you are ice-fishing
Not delving into the recent past as frozen over on the lake
Anyway the summer on the lakeside is quiet and uneventful.
From January 2
I wanted to dissolve
crushed walnuts in a glass
Thinking I could cure
My persistent headache
The convolutions of the nut
Matching those of the brain
The wine it mixed with
Turning to new blood
To water those mazes
Those rivers of thought
Capricious furrows
Like all medicine, bitter.
From January 3
In the city centers the stadiums and water-parks are immaculate
and so is the frozen-over water fountain.
But in the hinterland families eke out their living from grass and seeds,
and from January branches disappear all songbirds
along with the barn-swallow and the solitary finch.
From a concoction of ether and scarcer antihistamine, or from diesel fumes
comes a numbing intoxication much of the population depends upon,
distilled into mist breathed from a makeshift mask and piece of hose.
While fog shrouds the City, its auditoriums are bright until the power-outs.
And their dreams are filled with white-masked deities and rivers of treacle.
Through the thawing permafrost still cleaves the ox-driven plow.
The value of the paper currency is flatter than a paper upon which it’s
printed.
As are the merits of this work, all meant to flatter.
Last lines
The value of blank paper at the butt-end of a marbled composition book
Is greater than the ink spilled upon them, taking the form of hastily-written sentences
Of even less value than the ink spent to committing them on scarcer paper.
Soon the leaves of the book and the lines that wrinkle their surfaces
Can be counted on a single hand and on just more than one digit
And since more is less according to the laws of value,
As every shop-keeper knows, and since conversely less is more,
Filed leaves are cheaper, blank more costly
The further down I go upon the remaining pages
Until the last blank line in the whole book is priceless,
And the marbled cover less valuable on the market
Than the mill of the Great War or the funny money
Of the five and dime, or the money of Monopoly
When the other pieces of the board game have been lost
Which simply means you can neither win nor lose.
Saturday, January 14, 2012
Friday, January 13, 2012
From Aug 28 and Sept 10 2011
From August 28 2011
The roof of the Apthorp building in the sun—
Seen from Columbus Circle, the rounded mansard rooftops,
Like domes of a cathedral, the renaissance, [Venetian Atlantis],
As if the sky were sunlit water, the Apthorp drowned.
What must it cost to rent, or even buy.
So what that Zabar’s was a tourist trap.
To the Plaza you can walk from this corner.
This is what is called a hot corner.
A tall, gaunt man in 1982 was practicing
Electric bass by the subway stop,
Picking out the tune to If you could read my mind—
But stopped on what a tale my thoughts could tell.
You can walk to the Plaza through Central Park,
Dodging the horse-drawn carriages and taxis,
In the year after the same man had lost his bass.
He swayed on the same spot, a change-cup in his hand.
Nothing happened much in the field of music.
You must witness how those rooftops shined
After the last rain, through the mist the sun is parting,
The curved pastels of slate or copper flashing,
The caryatids holding storeys up, the Moorish ornament,
How Venuice fused with the East, all that Apthorp improted,
Unaffordable on normal salaries, except for the view.
From September 10 2011
As the fall sun peeks through the slats of my bamboo roll-up blind—
As the crickets pause and the traffic resounds in longer intervals
And the garden bed dries, full-grown stalks of grass and pokeweed
Leaning into the direction of the withered tomato vines,
As nothing happens new under the shining of the sun in the yard,
The other side shady, the sun-dried currents of air running through
The attic, aerating the rafters, aerating the over-crowded vegetable garden
One man could not live upon if his life depended upon it.
The roof of the Apthorp building in the sun—
Seen from Columbus Circle, the rounded mansard rooftops,
Like domes of a cathedral, the renaissance, [Venetian Atlantis],
As if the sky were sunlit water, the Apthorp drowned.
What must it cost to rent, or even buy.
So what that Zabar’s was a tourist trap.
To the Plaza you can walk from this corner.
This is what is called a hot corner.
A tall, gaunt man in 1982 was practicing
Electric bass by the subway stop,
Picking out the tune to If you could read my mind—
But stopped on what a tale my thoughts could tell.
You can walk to the Plaza through Central Park,
Dodging the horse-drawn carriages and taxis,
In the year after the same man had lost his bass.
He swayed on the same spot, a change-cup in his hand.
Nothing happened much in the field of music.
You must witness how those rooftops shined
After the last rain, through the mist the sun is parting,
The curved pastels of slate or copper flashing,
The caryatids holding storeys up, the Moorish ornament,
How Venuice fused with the East, all that Apthorp improted,
Unaffordable on normal salaries, except for the view.
From September 10 2011
As the fall sun peeks through the slats of my bamboo roll-up blind—
As the crickets pause and the traffic resounds in longer intervals
And the garden bed dries, full-grown stalks of grass and pokeweed
Leaning into the direction of the withered tomato vines,
As nothing happens new under the shining of the sun in the yard,
The other side shady, the sun-dried currents of air running through
The attic, aerating the rafters, aerating the over-crowded vegetable garden
One man could not live upon if his life depended upon it.
Monday, January 9, 2012
From October 1, 2011
Behind me, behind my tail, is a murky green that is the stable element
And the world I understand. A few rocks, seven exactly, some sand
That flies to catch the light from all sides, the food from above,
Some flashing bubbles, many illusions on the walls around us,
Shadow from approaching bodies, creatures with different apparitions
And of different sizes, all with eyes and mouths and limbs,
Creatures who can neither swim nor even float. Their vibrations
Barely disturb our place, no turbulence. My fellows have risen
To another state, plucked from the surface. Nothing jars the glass.
I am still the sole cause of the turbulence around me.
See how my fins stirs the sand, how flecks of pyrite shine.
Outside, ungainly creatures pay tribute with offerings.
****
As you move above among the upper ranks, the more you know just who your friends, who might be foes are. Among the upper tiers, the fewer the numbers. The higher the tier, the fewer who circulate. In the very highest tier mingle a handful. The most high, the one who can afford to spurn the company who brought him here, sits behind black velvet curtains and doors so thick they could take bullets. No one knows what the most high does with his time, no one knows who the most high is. The most high knows by divination what is to come. He knows just who to watch.
Could I just ingratiate myself to the residents of the upper tiers, only half a dozen souls would get me into the sanctum sanctorum. Could I get a peak among those hallowed halls. The busts of elders, all emeriti by now, line those halls. Actually, their busts lie in dimly lit alcoves, their names in brass. Also written in stone the gaffes you made in youth, gaffes that nonplussed the master practitioner when he was about to confer his blessing. When he retracted his proverbial hand from your brow, when he retracted the laurel branch from your crown, he thought, too bad the loss for him, but after all is said and done, it’s for the better, otherwise no lesson learned. Fame’s bony finger that had beckoned now curled into a fist pulled back into a sack-cloth sleeve you once thought silk. [sleeve of sack-cloth you once thought silk.]
Those among the upper tiers are ghostly in their pure magisteriality, but they pride themselves in how low they can come down to earth as they pride themselves on the low places from which they have arrived. They can pepper their speech with profanity with the best of them, knowing when to be circumspect, when to be cautious and balanced in tone, and when to stop. It’s their forbearance after all that earned them their place. Don’t change into the china shop like an 800-lb. gorilla was the best advice they ever received. The vernacular is the blood they must vampirized in the places to which they descend.
Lay a wreath at the foot of the eminence grise, speak your flowery encomium on the stage, and keep your thoughts to yourself.
Never forget that the effusions of the hapless are like the lines cast by novice fly-fishermen in all directions, catching nothing, getting no attention, piquing no interest from the fish-folk.
From the phone booth he rushes waving, to the upper balcony he walks, waving in acknowledgement as well, barely knowing these are his acolytes calling him from the streets, the city traffic drowning the greetings they utter.
A wave of people in a throng pushes admirer from admired, the master practitioner in his suite, his assistants attending to his needs.
“I fly from a place where flattery reigns” Purcell, Indian Queen (librettist Dryden).
Life at the top is not all eh dreamed he thinks as he mails the alimony check or tries to connect with his kids, who have lived in his tall shadow all their lives, for whom he expressed little affection. The memoirs they will write will drag his saintly visage through the sewers: how cold and how small, how small-minded he will seem. Don’t go there he ejaculates in the interview, puzzling the earnest cub reporter.
To stay in touch with the plebs he descends to the crowd, both hands in the pockets of his of his funky unwashed loosely fitting jeans.
The shaggy tendrils of the beets, the farmer’s soil still caking them, he fondles after getting them at the produce stand. How long has he let the hired help do all his shopping, after all?
How he points at the antiques in the window reveals his shrewdness, how he fingers his chin in firm examination as he lends an ear to the dealer. It turned out to be a good day. He soaked himself in the vernacular of the bazaar.
Finally, the fall has arrived in more than name, the air chilly, the day wet, rain dripping from the eaves, the summer vapors blown away, dead leaves sprawled on the grass, their dampness attaching them to the car’s windshield, bright red the sumac leaves among the maples, deceiving us with promises of oriental spices and color, of schooners aloft, their cannons blazing against Caribbean or African pirates, the newly forged chains rattling below deck, the forequarters empty, Boreas puffing away, no sight of land yet, the turbulence of sub-tropical waters matching the turbulence of wind propelling the barely sea-worthy craft southward, away from the cabins and chimneys, the glowing fireplaces of the colonials on this most august and calm of side-streets, in whose cupboard is a biscuit-tin decorated with the cat-folk, the cat mother bonneted, her arms wound in a shawl, her cabin behind her, no mouse-folk in sight, not today, not ever, never, where did the father-cat part from her, her brood swaddled in rocking cradles and bassinets, rumor telling us of the ship making its destination, among the bazaars or the spice hills, of red chilies the sumac false evokes, a funerary whiff of mold and ashes inching into the house.
And the world I understand. A few rocks, seven exactly, some sand
That flies to catch the light from all sides, the food from above,
Some flashing bubbles, many illusions on the walls around us,
Shadow from approaching bodies, creatures with different apparitions
And of different sizes, all with eyes and mouths and limbs,
Creatures who can neither swim nor even float. Their vibrations
Barely disturb our place, no turbulence. My fellows have risen
To another state, plucked from the surface. Nothing jars the glass.
I am still the sole cause of the turbulence around me.
See how my fins stirs the sand, how flecks of pyrite shine.
Outside, ungainly creatures pay tribute with offerings.
****
As you move above among the upper ranks, the more you know just who your friends, who might be foes are. Among the upper tiers, the fewer the numbers. The higher the tier, the fewer who circulate. In the very highest tier mingle a handful. The most high, the one who can afford to spurn the company who brought him here, sits behind black velvet curtains and doors so thick they could take bullets. No one knows what the most high does with his time, no one knows who the most high is. The most high knows by divination what is to come. He knows just who to watch.
Could I just ingratiate myself to the residents of the upper tiers, only half a dozen souls would get me into the sanctum sanctorum. Could I get a peak among those hallowed halls. The busts of elders, all emeriti by now, line those halls. Actually, their busts lie in dimly lit alcoves, their names in brass. Also written in stone the gaffes you made in youth, gaffes that nonplussed the master practitioner when he was about to confer his blessing. When he retracted his proverbial hand from your brow, when he retracted the laurel branch from your crown, he thought, too bad the loss for him, but after all is said and done, it’s for the better, otherwise no lesson learned. Fame’s bony finger that had beckoned now curled into a fist pulled back into a sack-cloth sleeve you once thought silk. [sleeve of sack-cloth you once thought silk.]
Those among the upper tiers are ghostly in their pure magisteriality, but they pride themselves in how low they can come down to earth as they pride themselves on the low places from which they have arrived. They can pepper their speech with profanity with the best of them, knowing when to be circumspect, when to be cautious and balanced in tone, and when to stop. It’s their forbearance after all that earned them their place. Don’t change into the china shop like an 800-lb. gorilla was the best advice they ever received. The vernacular is the blood they must vampirized in the places to which they descend.
Lay a wreath at the foot of the eminence grise, speak your flowery encomium on the stage, and keep your thoughts to yourself.
Never forget that the effusions of the hapless are like the lines cast by novice fly-fishermen in all directions, catching nothing, getting no attention, piquing no interest from the fish-folk.
From the phone booth he rushes waving, to the upper balcony he walks, waving in acknowledgement as well, barely knowing these are his acolytes calling him from the streets, the city traffic drowning the greetings they utter.
A wave of people in a throng pushes admirer from admired, the master practitioner in his suite, his assistants attending to his needs.
“I fly from a place where flattery reigns” Purcell, Indian Queen (librettist Dryden).
Life at the top is not all eh dreamed he thinks as he mails the alimony check or tries to connect with his kids, who have lived in his tall shadow all their lives, for whom he expressed little affection. The memoirs they will write will drag his saintly visage through the sewers: how cold and how small, how small-minded he will seem. Don’t go there he ejaculates in the interview, puzzling the earnest cub reporter.
To stay in touch with the plebs he descends to the crowd, both hands in the pockets of his of his funky unwashed loosely fitting jeans.
The shaggy tendrils of the beets, the farmer’s soil still caking them, he fondles after getting them at the produce stand. How long has he let the hired help do all his shopping, after all?
How he points at the antiques in the window reveals his shrewdness, how he fingers his chin in firm examination as he lends an ear to the dealer. It turned out to be a good day. He soaked himself in the vernacular of the bazaar.
Finally, the fall has arrived in more than name, the air chilly, the day wet, rain dripping from the eaves, the summer vapors blown away, dead leaves sprawled on the grass, their dampness attaching them to the car’s windshield, bright red the sumac leaves among the maples, deceiving us with promises of oriental spices and color, of schooners aloft, their cannons blazing against Caribbean or African pirates, the newly forged chains rattling below deck, the forequarters empty, Boreas puffing away, no sight of land yet, the turbulence of sub-tropical waters matching the turbulence of wind propelling the barely sea-worthy craft southward, away from the cabins and chimneys, the glowing fireplaces of the colonials on this most august and calm of side-streets, in whose cupboard is a biscuit-tin decorated with the cat-folk, the cat mother bonneted, her arms wound in a shawl, her cabin behind her, no mouse-folk in sight, not today, not ever, never, where did the father-cat part from her, her brood swaddled in rocking cradles and bassinets, rumor telling us of the ship making its destination, among the bazaars or the spice hills, of red chilies the sumac false evokes, a funerary whiff of mold and ashes inching into the house.
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
From July 3-4 2011
Out lazy indolent peasantry must awake by the lash!
A visit to the empty panopticon as devised by Jeremy Bentham will convince the guest of his method’s wisdom, the skylights in the domed roof blinding the guard box and stairwell with several shafts of sunlight, at nightfall the harvest moon descended. A flock of crows visit the powerlines. Irradiated melons growing as large as unlanced boils. So the poete maudit in his night-robes sung to the broken Doric columns and to the trees. When you grow up son, what would you like to be? How’s your report card? Which bacteria can consume both banana peels and coffee-grounds? In the dormitory courtyard he practiced the high-pitched peals meant to shatter glass as in those old Memorex commercials. And glasses of daguerreotypes and plate glass windows. But instead he sounded like a banshee and they wanted to lock him up. The very cover of the book announces an important cultural moment, an arrival. Significance before meaning. I am writing as if English were my second language—this was intended. In the cafeteria the jocks are still drinking two chocolate milks and double scoops of mashed potatoes. Another fight breaks out at Chuck E. Cheese. With the rain the summer vacation at the camp is ruined. A bundle of clothes in the dryer awaits my hand. She wrote entirely about the displaced people she had settled, mixing their dialog with bits from their own language. The skin of smoked trout as if flayed and peeled away.
Let’s face it. When you’re not opening old wounds, you’re opening a new can of worms. You’ll eat some worms since nobody likes you enough to visit you. Worms in compost work. They work through the various foods buried there. I lick the wounds I open clean.
Yesterday I ran part of Lake Morey. Summer camp was in session, and there were two camps. The tents were set up like barracks, their flaps open. One camp was for girls. Many bicyclists appeared, making me wish I’d brought my bike, although the sky had been overcast when I’d departed my house. At the end of my run, I picked a few ripe wild strawberries growing at the edge of the road, then walked upon a footpath that coiled into the woods, scattered with needles. A brook pooled before me. The fallen logs by the brook were matted with moss. The shade was thick, cooling the footpath. At some point, you could barely see the summer houses through the firs.
But before my run ended, a succession of exploding thuds sounded above me from a modernized log cabin on the hill, agitating the beagle led along by a short elfin woman whose face was strained as she upheld her arms almost as if in supplication, the leash in one hand, the tail of the beagle with its white tip waving wildly as the dog turned whichaway seeking the noise’s source—the explosions (M-80s) drowned the music in my ears, played to establish rhythm, boost the runner’s adrenaline level. The old woman’s eyes were turning wildly in her head as the beagle thrashed its tail as she wished aloud for an end to the noise, to the thudding explosions, the percussion shaking the air. When the V-2 dropped, the children died from the evacuation of air from their lungs: the blast was noiseless. The beagle, a pointer, moved in circles, searching for the source of noise, the tips of its white tail swinging. In thunder dogs do not know where to turn. The old woman shook her arms in the air.
The tiny succulents on the rock have bright yellow flowers. Beneath them stands a dwarf arbor vitae purchased on sale at Shaw’s. I filled the bird feeder to the top—that’s why I’m hearing so much bird song—or was there just a squabble? I’m waiting for the time when I can pluck the fruit from the vine without worrying where the rest comes from.
The worm in the compost forms a thread of air behind him. Thus all signs of his work collapse and leave no trace.
Moving in circles, the beagle’s tail wildly flailed as it searched for the source of those booms from the M-80s launched by the household up hill, a modern log cabin atop a lawn made by driving trees and boulders back, made from what must be a thousand trips to Home Depot. A faint memory of the sacrifices of pagan antiquity in the barbeque, lighter fluid and charred meat, fat off the bone sizzling among the embers. The smoke from the barbeques rises to the gods, Mars savoring the smell the most, appreciates the offerings. Would not the crash of a passenger jet smell like that, the fuel tanks torched, the victims twisted and fallen? His nostrils flared wide, Mars appreciates the comparison, not thinking it hyperbolic in the slightest. Offerings of modern life far exceed in number and scale those paltry offerings of the bronze age. Hats off to Vulcan the ironsmith, deft facilitator! Metallurgical advances intensify the event.
A visit to the empty panopticon as devised by Jeremy Bentham will convince the guest of his method’s wisdom, the skylights in the domed roof blinding the guard box and stairwell with several shafts of sunlight, at nightfall the harvest moon descended. A flock of crows visit the powerlines. Irradiated melons growing as large as unlanced boils. So the poete maudit in his night-robes sung to the broken Doric columns and to the trees. When you grow up son, what would you like to be? How’s your report card? Which bacteria can consume both banana peels and coffee-grounds? In the dormitory courtyard he practiced the high-pitched peals meant to shatter glass as in those old Memorex commercials. And glasses of daguerreotypes and plate glass windows. But instead he sounded like a banshee and they wanted to lock him up. The very cover of the book announces an important cultural moment, an arrival. Significance before meaning. I am writing as if English were my second language—this was intended. In the cafeteria the jocks are still drinking two chocolate milks and double scoops of mashed potatoes. Another fight breaks out at Chuck E. Cheese. With the rain the summer vacation at the camp is ruined. A bundle of clothes in the dryer awaits my hand. She wrote entirely about the displaced people she had settled, mixing their dialog with bits from their own language. The skin of smoked trout as if flayed and peeled away.
Let’s face it. When you’re not opening old wounds, you’re opening a new can of worms. You’ll eat some worms since nobody likes you enough to visit you. Worms in compost work. They work through the various foods buried there. I lick the wounds I open clean.
Yesterday I ran part of Lake Morey. Summer camp was in session, and there were two camps. The tents were set up like barracks, their flaps open. One camp was for girls. Many bicyclists appeared, making me wish I’d brought my bike, although the sky had been overcast when I’d departed my house. At the end of my run, I picked a few ripe wild strawberries growing at the edge of the road, then walked upon a footpath that coiled into the woods, scattered with needles. A brook pooled before me. The fallen logs by the brook were matted with moss. The shade was thick, cooling the footpath. At some point, you could barely see the summer houses through the firs.
But before my run ended, a succession of exploding thuds sounded above me from a modernized log cabin on the hill, agitating the beagle led along by a short elfin woman whose face was strained as she upheld her arms almost as if in supplication, the leash in one hand, the tail of the beagle with its white tip waving wildly as the dog turned whichaway seeking the noise’s source—the explosions (M-80s) drowned the music in my ears, played to establish rhythm, boost the runner’s adrenaline level. The old woman’s eyes were turning wildly in her head as the beagle thrashed its tail as she wished aloud for an end to the noise, to the thudding explosions, the percussion shaking the air. When the V-2 dropped, the children died from the evacuation of air from their lungs: the blast was noiseless. The beagle, a pointer, moved in circles, searching for the source of noise, the tips of its white tail swinging. In thunder dogs do not know where to turn. The old woman shook her arms in the air.
The tiny succulents on the rock have bright yellow flowers. Beneath them stands a dwarf arbor vitae purchased on sale at Shaw’s. I filled the bird feeder to the top—that’s why I’m hearing so much bird song—or was there just a squabble? I’m waiting for the time when I can pluck the fruit from the vine without worrying where the rest comes from.
The worm in the compost forms a thread of air behind him. Thus all signs of his work collapse and leave no trace.
Moving in circles, the beagle’s tail wildly flailed as it searched for the source of those booms from the M-80s launched by the household up hill, a modern log cabin atop a lawn made by driving trees and boulders back, made from what must be a thousand trips to Home Depot. A faint memory of the sacrifices of pagan antiquity in the barbeque, lighter fluid and charred meat, fat off the bone sizzling among the embers. The smoke from the barbeques rises to the gods, Mars savoring the smell the most, appreciates the offerings. Would not the crash of a passenger jet smell like that, the fuel tanks torched, the victims twisted and fallen? His nostrils flared wide, Mars appreciates the comparison, not thinking it hyperbolic in the slightest. Offerings of modern life far exceed in number and scale those paltry offerings of the bronze age. Hats off to Vulcan the ironsmith, deft facilitator! Metallurgical advances intensify the event.
March 26 2011
An elegant algorithm should unfold like an origami plant in the halls of the crisis, a delicate web membrane whose veins you can see. A delicate artifact whose purpose no longer appears above the earth in the enlightened present. Pack in those vowels, those gluten-rich modifiers.
At the camp, I changed my regimen instantly. You could be fast, but that wouldn’t pay. Mammals are not sui generis communal when in families. Had the reptiles advanced instead, imagine the coldness of their reflections, upon their sons and daughters, upon their siblings. Imagine the beetling of their brow in the deep thought required to ice their competitors, the mammals. No Harvard behaviorist highbrow could compare to them in the purely cold courage of their arguments and calculations—sink or swim.
Calculi were small stones, also beads of the abacus. How could they calculate without Arabic numerals? I was driving over the bridge to White River as I thought of this. The sign said SPEED LIMIT 55. We drivers ignored the sign.
In the cleanest most immaculate houses, worthy of the photographic features in Home and Gardens, there is an unlit corner relegated to chaos and abandonment—loose brick, empty paint cans viscera of water-hose and wire. It’s a room full of matter out of place, unlocked only when the residents know that guests would never venture near it, never cross it. But when the house expands, a neighbor’s land bought, the room’s cleaned up, remodeled, and another corner takes its place, but already a dumpster is moored nearby to accept its junk, its records, and its embarrassments. What local weekly, what student newspaper doesn’t print a verse or two about the reliquaries of attics, about faded photograph albums, grandmother’s old photographs, about the continuity of the past from which we were unduly severed? There’s some sincerity to these expressions. But that is not the true subject here, those albums are a digression. Does the visible neglect of these corners come from negligence and exhaustion or from willful forgetfulness? Or is the photogenic order of the household grounded in this disorder? Without it, a quiet and staid inertia, the household a mausoleum, indifferent to fashion.
Surely the last episode of the series must be about aquatic mammals, about the adaptation of mammals to water, whether porpoise, whale or manatee. Meerkats who mount the shoulder of a host, as if a tree from which to peer. Hit the supplicant with that birch switch, while the steam expands in the cabin. In Arkansas, truckers sleep inside their rigs, and the rugs in apartments double as prayer-mats. A fjord holds more than fish roe. Salmon-enriched rivers, the spawn of fingerlings, bifurcates the valleys.
Her mother suffers from allergies, as she does every Christmas. She has a mildly disapproving demeanor. Her taste in art is more advanced than that of her daughter. Her daughter takes no interest, for example, in David Hockney, whom her mother just loves. She loves the pastels, the pinks and aqua-blues, their serene and depopulated blankness. But that’s OK, because the daughter inherited the business, and works long hours managing it. They evaluate distressed property, which means when property goes down, they really make out like bandits, but when it goes up, they make out like bandits too. So they do well. I’m there for the ride. But there’s a daughter out in Los Angeles, and her eyes go strange. I’m no one for scenes.
The oldest daughter takes my mother aside in the kitchen one day, asking her whether she’d ever noticed my pupils dilating or contracting from the influence of drugs. She suspects her sister’s habit, but she doesn’t want to divulge as much.
And another thing: the mother drives her older daughter’s husband to drink or to illness every year.
“Should’ve salted over some money before you were out of work” said Pilgrim when driving Manuel home.
The phrase “to salt over” connotes little interest is earned in the savings, as if the money were being put in a change jar instead of a bank.
Of those untidy corners one always persists.
As if neglect were purposeful, to remind us of the huts in which we lived, or the river side settlements, the houses on stilts falling into floodwaters. Bring your incisors, the means by which to part the meat from the bone. Bring those fabulous triangular back teeth to excavate the marrow. It’s the dentist who excavates the tooth to fill, but where’s the plunger cusp? Loser, you ground the amalgam off. It’s you, said the dentist, who ruined my plunger cusp, the flying buttress I deployed in your mouth. You ground the amalgam into saliva, and I must slave again to put it back.
Thank God there are no spell checks on paper, no red and wavy lines beneath the malapropism or misspelling, no green wavy lines beneath the grammatical error, beneath the lack of agreement especially when the agreement has not been decided upon, the new sentence frankly unfinished. And to be frank is to be free to be incomplete. The condition of writing in the journal is a kind of freedom that is finally unsatisfactory when the faculties are not required to commit themselves to a final work. But laziness is a healthy suspension of the faculties, a necessary indirection. The sun falls outside, but how chilly it will be when I go into the work shed, try to unlock the bikes, untangle the water hoses. The shed needs new florescent lights.
The floor bows when I walk upon it. Nocturnal mice eat the bags of birdfeed or the grass seedling. The floor-boards of plywood are oily. In the recycling center free sand can be had for anyone who wants it to shovel onto their icy driveways. But spring is winning, the winter embodied in snow banks is retreating, but persists in the fields—its officers encourage fortitude against the enemy, saying “if we can only last through the summer our forces can prevail. October is a safe zone. With December’s reinforcements, we can accomplish the mission, return the world to ice. We’ve failed before, but we’ve only learned lessons that make us stronger. Don’t fail us now. Stifle the growth of the grass; Resist the blandishments of the sun to join the plants, the succulents that imprison you. No more water-fairy stories.
Stroke the back of the couch for the dust that entraps you. I’ll tackle and maybe unpack Marvell’s Horatian Ode on Cromwell.
At the camp, I changed my regimen instantly. You could be fast, but that wouldn’t pay. Mammals are not sui generis communal when in families. Had the reptiles advanced instead, imagine the coldness of their reflections, upon their sons and daughters, upon their siblings. Imagine the beetling of their brow in the deep thought required to ice their competitors, the mammals. No Harvard behaviorist highbrow could compare to them in the purely cold courage of their arguments and calculations—sink or swim.
Calculi were small stones, also beads of the abacus. How could they calculate without Arabic numerals? I was driving over the bridge to White River as I thought of this. The sign said SPEED LIMIT 55. We drivers ignored the sign.
In the cleanest most immaculate houses, worthy of the photographic features in Home and Gardens, there is an unlit corner relegated to chaos and abandonment—loose brick, empty paint cans viscera of water-hose and wire. It’s a room full of matter out of place, unlocked only when the residents know that guests would never venture near it, never cross it. But when the house expands, a neighbor’s land bought, the room’s cleaned up, remodeled, and another corner takes its place, but already a dumpster is moored nearby to accept its junk, its records, and its embarrassments. What local weekly, what student newspaper doesn’t print a verse or two about the reliquaries of attics, about faded photograph albums, grandmother’s old photographs, about the continuity of the past from which we were unduly severed? There’s some sincerity to these expressions. But that is not the true subject here, those albums are a digression. Does the visible neglect of these corners come from negligence and exhaustion or from willful forgetfulness? Or is the photogenic order of the household grounded in this disorder? Without it, a quiet and staid inertia, the household a mausoleum, indifferent to fashion.
Surely the last episode of the series must be about aquatic mammals, about the adaptation of mammals to water, whether porpoise, whale or manatee. Meerkats who mount the shoulder of a host, as if a tree from which to peer. Hit the supplicant with that birch switch, while the steam expands in the cabin. In Arkansas, truckers sleep inside their rigs, and the rugs in apartments double as prayer-mats. A fjord holds more than fish roe. Salmon-enriched rivers, the spawn of fingerlings, bifurcates the valleys.
Her mother suffers from allergies, as she does every Christmas. She has a mildly disapproving demeanor. Her taste in art is more advanced than that of her daughter. Her daughter takes no interest, for example, in David Hockney, whom her mother just loves. She loves the pastels, the pinks and aqua-blues, their serene and depopulated blankness. But that’s OK, because the daughter inherited the business, and works long hours managing it. They evaluate distressed property, which means when property goes down, they really make out like bandits, but when it goes up, they make out like bandits too. So they do well. I’m there for the ride. But there’s a daughter out in Los Angeles, and her eyes go strange. I’m no one for scenes.
The oldest daughter takes my mother aside in the kitchen one day, asking her whether she’d ever noticed my pupils dilating or contracting from the influence of drugs. She suspects her sister’s habit, but she doesn’t want to divulge as much.
And another thing: the mother drives her older daughter’s husband to drink or to illness every year.
“Should’ve salted over some money before you were out of work” said Pilgrim when driving Manuel home.
The phrase “to salt over” connotes little interest is earned in the savings, as if the money were being put in a change jar instead of a bank.
Of those untidy corners one always persists.
As if neglect were purposeful, to remind us of the huts in which we lived, or the river side settlements, the houses on stilts falling into floodwaters. Bring your incisors, the means by which to part the meat from the bone. Bring those fabulous triangular back teeth to excavate the marrow. It’s the dentist who excavates the tooth to fill, but where’s the plunger cusp? Loser, you ground the amalgam off. It’s you, said the dentist, who ruined my plunger cusp, the flying buttress I deployed in your mouth. You ground the amalgam into saliva, and I must slave again to put it back.
Thank God there are no spell checks on paper, no red and wavy lines beneath the malapropism or misspelling, no green wavy lines beneath the grammatical error, beneath the lack of agreement especially when the agreement has not been decided upon, the new sentence frankly unfinished. And to be frank is to be free to be incomplete. The condition of writing in the journal is a kind of freedom that is finally unsatisfactory when the faculties are not required to commit themselves to a final work. But laziness is a healthy suspension of the faculties, a necessary indirection. The sun falls outside, but how chilly it will be when I go into the work shed, try to unlock the bikes, untangle the water hoses. The shed needs new florescent lights.
The floor bows when I walk upon it. Nocturnal mice eat the bags of birdfeed or the grass seedling. The floor-boards of plywood are oily. In the recycling center free sand can be had for anyone who wants it to shovel onto their icy driveways. But spring is winning, the winter embodied in snow banks is retreating, but persists in the fields—its officers encourage fortitude against the enemy, saying “if we can only last through the summer our forces can prevail. October is a safe zone. With December’s reinforcements, we can accomplish the mission, return the world to ice. We’ve failed before, but we’ve only learned lessons that make us stronger. Don’t fail us now. Stifle the growth of the grass; Resist the blandishments of the sun to join the plants, the succulents that imprison you. No more water-fairy stories.
Stroke the back of the couch for the dust that entraps you. I’ll tackle and maybe unpack Marvell’s Horatian Ode on Cromwell.
Monday, November 28, 2011
From September 12 2009
Do I hear the vibration of crickets throughout the house or could it be the much higher-pitched buzz of the waking cicadas? The same buzz you’d hear among the elms and beeches in New Jersey and Manhattan?
A drone not to be confined with those mystical varieties reported to put the id and ego to rest, and connected the soul to those larger dependencies communed with without the interference of thought or any presupposition? A buzz that becomes a variety of silence just as one trains one’s ear not to hear the whinging drones of power stations, transformers, furnaces, a sound like a bed of leaves or bed of nails or equal height or a field of stones, neither transporting nor to be transported? Hum of the dynamo, murmur of the idling engine, a breathing machine’s exhalation of bubbles?
A TV binge: luminescent jellyfish umbrellas in dark water, the Iron Chef doing Kung Fu chicken with prunes, consumption of a fistful of grubs in Survivor, the new American Idol disqualified, dethroned, the shoot-out, all that glitters being not gold among those watches on Home Shopper’s Network, CSI Las Vegas, New York, Miami, Denver, DeMoines, but Real Housewives of Atlanta, New Jersey, etc., some change back from Pizza Hut.
_________________________________________________
What gets spoken does not get read
What is spoken remains unread—such a shame.
A confidential exchange of words with no one in earshot
Cannot be done justice.
As I depopulate the marshes
No one at home would seem to reward me.
The medal remains within its velvet casing,
The marching band remains out of tune
As I dry the swamps up
The light slanting into the studio
Because you can’t unpack these conceits in logical strands
The statement made cannot be simple
Among the cords and fibers and fasces of the brain-stem
Where thoughts both contradictory and related come together
Where one conceit becomes unwound from another, an improvisation
That once engendered among those tiny electrical impulses
Can thrive or perish, just as some seeds catch and increase.
The cliffs on which saplings clutch, whether birch or pine,
Doomed to be stunted among those slate or granite crevasses
Where stone grinds and softens enough for roots to grab
Reminds me of the fragility of tangents, these sallies-forth
On which my modesty depends. May you notice how sincerely
I try not to be prolix, try not to act as if I had to
Prove something. Yet my resume is available to all.
“He isn’t someone I would call prepossessing. Alone I wouldn’t
Seek him out, or someone like him.
Chance alone brought us to the same room,
But the more we learned about the other, the less we wished we knew.
These are not people who I find attractive—they’re not one of us.
“Someone with integrity is what I am seeking. I had an idea…”
Deliberately vague trail off to repel unwarranted attention.
A drone not to be confined with those mystical varieties reported to put the id and ego to rest, and connected the soul to those larger dependencies communed with without the interference of thought or any presupposition? A buzz that becomes a variety of silence just as one trains one’s ear not to hear the whinging drones of power stations, transformers, furnaces, a sound like a bed of leaves or bed of nails or equal height or a field of stones, neither transporting nor to be transported? Hum of the dynamo, murmur of the idling engine, a breathing machine’s exhalation of bubbles?
A TV binge: luminescent jellyfish umbrellas in dark water, the Iron Chef doing Kung Fu chicken with prunes, consumption of a fistful of grubs in Survivor, the new American Idol disqualified, dethroned, the shoot-out, all that glitters being not gold among those watches on Home Shopper’s Network, CSI Las Vegas, New York, Miami, Denver, DeMoines, but Real Housewives of Atlanta, New Jersey, etc., some change back from Pizza Hut.
_________________________________________________
What gets spoken does not get read
What is spoken remains unread—such a shame.
A confidential exchange of words with no one in earshot
Cannot be done justice.
As I depopulate the marshes
No one at home would seem to reward me.
The medal remains within its velvet casing,
The marching band remains out of tune
As I dry the swamps up
The light slanting into the studio
Because you can’t unpack these conceits in logical strands
The statement made cannot be simple
Among the cords and fibers and fasces of the brain-stem
Where thoughts both contradictory and related come together
Where one conceit becomes unwound from another, an improvisation
That once engendered among those tiny electrical impulses
Can thrive or perish, just as some seeds catch and increase.
The cliffs on which saplings clutch, whether birch or pine,
Doomed to be stunted among those slate or granite crevasses
Where stone grinds and softens enough for roots to grab
Reminds me of the fragility of tangents, these sallies-forth
On which my modesty depends. May you notice how sincerely
I try not to be prolix, try not to act as if I had to
Prove something. Yet my resume is available to all.
“He isn’t someone I would call prepossessing. Alone I wouldn’t
Seek him out, or someone like him.
Chance alone brought us to the same room,
But the more we learned about the other, the less we wished we knew.
These are not people who I find attractive—they’re not one of us.
“Someone with integrity is what I am seeking. I had an idea…”
Deliberately vague trail off to repel unwarranted attention.
From April 18 2009
A bar torn down in the Bowery
Brick by brick, has been rebuilt in Las Vegas,
Each grafittied brick, each toilet stall exposed,
Bared to what it was, unbarred, doorless.
Tribute is paid to bands that once played there,
The members having overdosed or moved on.
Three times I’ve been down to the Bowery.
The first time, a handsome prostitute approached me.
Second time, a bum who mimicked Robin Leach,
His carnival barker’s East London accent
In Lives of the Rich and Famous: and the rich
And famous live on! And for a third time
I’d been to the bar cum clothing emporium
Where business until recently was booming,
And fourth around the corner I’d been in McSorley’s
Just long enough to notice the pressed tin roof
Of the fin de siècle, and in a former maritime chapel
Or meeting-hall south of the atomized bar,
Reconstructed brick by brick on the Nevada flats
Where’s they earlier rebuilt Berlin worker housing
Down to each clapboard, each die-pressed curtain,
Importing each timber piece from Siberia
To hose the whole thing down and burn it
To approximate the feuersturm to come
But I have more than just a picture postcard
Of encounters that if not entirely satisfactory
Were at the very least inconclusive.
First, I didn’t buy the velvet-voiced hooker’s services
Who would’ve done better mid-town as a receptionist.
I didn’t praise the mimicry of the vagrant
Who could’ve passed as an East Londoner,
A Dickensian voice sparkling with chapel-bells
As it narrated through the mahogany cabins
Of the yachts of the stars reclined in lounges,
Stars who watched their money grow on trees
Before their final bypass or trip to the cancer ward
As deeply brown meanwhile as Palmyrian figs.
The bar is gone but the toilet reconstructed to the letter.
I can Google the corner from McSorley’s to CBGB
And navigate through the doors of the maritime hall
But every face in daylight has been smudged.
Who’s there now? No one I can get close to.
Brick by brick, has been rebuilt in Las Vegas,
Each grafittied brick, each toilet stall exposed,
Bared to what it was, unbarred, doorless.
Tribute is paid to bands that once played there,
The members having overdosed or moved on.
Three times I’ve been down to the Bowery.
The first time, a handsome prostitute approached me.
Second time, a bum who mimicked Robin Leach,
His carnival barker’s East London accent
In Lives of the Rich and Famous: and the rich
And famous live on! And for a third time
I’d been to the bar cum clothing emporium
Where business until recently was booming,
And fourth around the corner I’d been in McSorley’s
Just long enough to notice the pressed tin roof
Of the fin de siècle, and in a former maritime chapel
Or meeting-hall south of the atomized bar,
Reconstructed brick by brick on the Nevada flats
Where’s they earlier rebuilt Berlin worker housing
Down to each clapboard, each die-pressed curtain,
Importing each timber piece from Siberia
To hose the whole thing down and burn it
To approximate the feuersturm to come
But I have more than just a picture postcard
Of encounters that if not entirely satisfactory
Were at the very least inconclusive.
First, I didn’t buy the velvet-voiced hooker’s services
Who would’ve done better mid-town as a receptionist.
I didn’t praise the mimicry of the vagrant
Who could’ve passed as an East Londoner,
A Dickensian voice sparkling with chapel-bells
As it narrated through the mahogany cabins
Of the yachts of the stars reclined in lounges,
Stars who watched their money grow on trees
Before their final bypass or trip to the cancer ward
As deeply brown meanwhile as Palmyrian figs.
The bar is gone but the toilet reconstructed to the letter.
I can Google the corner from McSorley’s to CBGB
And navigate through the doors of the maritime hall
But every face in daylight has been smudged.
Who’s there now? No one I can get close to.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
