Self-centered, self-absorbed, euphemism for selfish,
Preoccupied with markets, with new properties, with
Turning the properties over on the markets, with yields,
And with dividends, and with average daily balances,
With deposits and withdrawals, with investment patterns,
With setting oneself up for life and with providing for
One’s future and the future of one’s family and one’s estate—
surely one can counter-argue this is healthy,
Better than being a flagellant or a bomb-thrower
In a crowded theater or pretending to be the last of
the courageous men in the world, a total dope, a blowhard?
He had maintenance issues said the guy with the ponytail
Whose sincerity was undoubted, who didn’t want to impose
Heavy trips on anyone, but wanted to show how caring
He really was, how he’d like to give everyone in the room
A hug, but there isn’t any time what with the schedule.
All I really want to do is show how much I share among
The human community, this circle, me and you, you can call
Me by my first name, I am also executive director, chief
Vision officer of a small firm specializing in enhanced
Digital telepathy, not that I wish to probe, disturb
Your personal space, your circle, which I do not confuse
With the circle that we have—together, us—not one or two.
But I might add, not so much as codicil than as admonition
That like all of us, you also have an issue with your fathers,
So as my young wife has had her first child how deeply
I ponder this, whether at work, or on the way to work, on
My custom-made Italian racing bicycle with its frame of
Pressurized carbon on which I’ve rode to work and cruised
On coastal roads, through cities become consecutively smaller,
Until they are those cemeteries with slate headstones from the past
Fenced in with wrought iron, where the uncut grass waves
Its chaff to the gun-metal sky, and a rain is about to visit
this old mill town, and I lie perfectly awake, day-dreaming
but a voice urges don’t be so indulgent, keep to the ground
for the people, the people here, my audience, mon sembables,
my consumer, target audience, sole patron, mes amis.
Monday, August 11, 2008
Post Office Lounge: rough draft from '03
Cookie with a spiral of cinnamon
Sugar crystals planets congealed
From rivers of honey
The cinnamon from jungles
spiraling in the cookie
From plantations watered by rivers
In which mothers launder and unbind
Hair contesting Rapunzel’s
Cinnamon that doesn’t grow on trees,
languid as the air it clouds—
Money more likely from trees
than the spice of a cookie
flotillas carry to your doorstep
And how the cookie crumbles
in the toothless laugh of a package handler
after he dips it in a Pepsi foam
throwing his head back [with a hiss].
Nature abhors a waste of air
[Orpheus taming the beasts]
In a painted bestiary,
the Himalayan tiger lives beside
the eucalyptus-chewing panda
nudging him with a silver paw.
Behind two giant penguins tower,
stare through the vanity mirrors
of the postal handlers’ lounge.
Perspective is generous, peace this window.
She devours microwavable mini-pizzas
at the table across. With her around
no chance to change the channel
from the soaps. She's on contract.
in the washroom, beyond the sorting machines
referred to by four digit numbers, zeros gratis,
farther even than the thousand-yard stare
go beyond the walls containing our life
in epistles or Kraft-paper packages
from loved ones or strangers with gifts
The networks dissolved in a glass,
that's how the cookie crumbles
The one with Afro and the saucer eyes
Sugar crystals planets congealed
From rivers of honey
The cinnamon from jungles
spiraling in the cookie
From plantations watered by rivers
In which mothers launder and unbind
Hair contesting Rapunzel’s
Cinnamon that doesn’t grow on trees,
languid as the air it clouds—
Money more likely from trees
than the spice of a cookie
flotillas carry to your doorstep
And how the cookie crumbles
in the toothless laugh of a package handler
after he dips it in a Pepsi foam
throwing his head back [with a hiss].
Nature abhors a waste of air
[Orpheus taming the beasts]
In a painted bestiary,
the Himalayan tiger lives beside
the eucalyptus-chewing panda
nudging him with a silver paw.
Behind two giant penguins tower,
stare through the vanity mirrors
of the postal handlers’ lounge.
Perspective is generous, peace this window.
She devours microwavable mini-pizzas
at the table across. With her around
no chance to change the channel
from the soaps. She's on contract.
in the washroom, beyond the sorting machines
referred to by four digit numbers, zeros gratis,
farther even than the thousand-yard stare
go beyond the walls containing our life
in epistles or Kraft-paper packages
from loved ones or strangers with gifts
The networks dissolved in a glass,
that's how the cookie crumbles
The one with Afro and the saucer eyes
Sunday, August 10, 2008
12/3/06
I folded the kibbles of rodent poison into foil, then closed it up into a plastic sandwich bag, then placed the bag beneath the kitchen cabinet. And then I washed my hands of the matter. Twice I washed my hands in the evening. How many trees are felled to make these flyers crammed into my mailbox? Peeling content from the envelopes is like shucking corn. Once I was asked to pull the silk from the kernels but to keep the ears on, but I refused because it was too time-consuming. Better to eat the corn raw from the cob than to be precious. It would have suited me to pull the ears back, tear the silken strands from the ear, and toss it naked into the fire.
Serves you right Orville Redenbacher, no little resemblance to Kim Jong Il, only the latter portlier. Whenever that dude writes his autobiography, it'll be bound for Oprah's list. The man who knew when very young why flowers were not black, why streams did not reverse their course and why bees didn't sting when in a swarm around their hive, why cats curled atop the hoods of cars, why crows roosted in the chestnut trees in the dead of winter. He was the son of the sun , and even Il Duce would have had to bow in the sunlight--never was there such a narrrative for the national laureate to labor upon.
Perhaps your emotions clarify, become as light as the air you breathe. Or perhaps you're less morbid in your cast of mind. Cast out, outcast, the die cast, your cast hardens. Casting as in sculpture, outcast as if flung from afar. The die is cast; the dispositions have hardened. So I reify the object of my disdain until the sinner becomes the sin. Economy of resources dictates when this becomes the case. An infinitely patient being would do otherwise; that being would comprehend the failings of a personality without needing to invest itself in any kind of earthly involvement; as long as that being did not possess an individual body locked in a particular place, it could posess an infinite understanding and will to understand more.
But when Neanderthal confronted Homo Sapiens, or before that Homo Pithecanthropus confronted Homo Erectus, was understanding possible, one draped in animal skins and huddled in a cave, the other with elegantly serrated flint spears and trousers and moccasins, their only flaw being the weaker bearskin that covered them, the result of a misguided homeopathy: that what was good for bears was good for those who traveled like bears. But there was no time for understanding between species, no ground for patience. The wind was blowing the fires down, the fuel was harder to find, and the animal wealth was harder to extract from the mammoth, mule deer, or antelope. Eohippus, tiny horse hiding among gooseberry bushes, silently mocked his lumbering descendant on the steppes. The Neanderthal, back from having buried loved ones among beads and ochre, stared at Homo Erectus as he tried to assemble thoughts from fears he could not mouth.
There were no grounds for human understanding, which is based on a sympathy that is bodiless, composed from hte vapors of alcohol during Happy Hour, at the very beginning when no one is in the bar yet.
Serves you right Orville Redenbacher, no little resemblance to Kim Jong Il, only the latter portlier. Whenever that dude writes his autobiography, it'll be bound for Oprah's list. The man who knew when very young why flowers were not black, why streams did not reverse their course and why bees didn't sting when in a swarm around their hive, why cats curled atop the hoods of cars, why crows roosted in the chestnut trees in the dead of winter. He was the son of the sun , and even Il Duce would have had to bow in the sunlight--never was there such a narrrative for the national laureate to labor upon.
Perhaps your emotions clarify, become as light as the air you breathe. Or perhaps you're less morbid in your cast of mind. Cast out, outcast, the die cast, your cast hardens. Casting as in sculpture, outcast as if flung from afar. The die is cast; the dispositions have hardened. So I reify the object of my disdain until the sinner becomes the sin. Economy of resources dictates when this becomes the case. An infinitely patient being would do otherwise; that being would comprehend the failings of a personality without needing to invest itself in any kind of earthly involvement; as long as that being did not possess an individual body locked in a particular place, it could posess an infinite understanding and will to understand more.
But when Neanderthal confronted Homo Sapiens, or before that Homo Pithecanthropus confronted Homo Erectus, was understanding possible, one draped in animal skins and huddled in a cave, the other with elegantly serrated flint spears and trousers and moccasins, their only flaw being the weaker bearskin that covered them, the result of a misguided homeopathy: that what was good for bears was good for those who traveled like bears. But there was no time for understanding between species, no ground for patience. The wind was blowing the fires down, the fuel was harder to find, and the animal wealth was harder to extract from the mammoth, mule deer, or antelope. Eohippus, tiny horse hiding among gooseberry bushes, silently mocked his lumbering descendant on the steppes. The Neanderthal, back from having buried loved ones among beads and ochre, stared at Homo Erectus as he tried to assemble thoughts from fears he could not mouth.
There were no grounds for human understanding, which is based on a sympathy that is bodiless, composed from hte vapors of alcohol during Happy Hour, at the very beginning when no one is in the bar yet.
Spring 07 (draft)
Ducts moved air from beneath or moved air from above,
or from the sides of buildings, or from beneath the awnings.
Rail-cars roared beneath the buildings, stopped and roared again.
The awnings of the shops bellied with wind as if they were sails,
and the banners that drooped from the sides of the buildings
were floodlit and also bellied from the winds underneath them.
And the winds were compressed to an even greater pressure
by the narrowness of the mazes through which the wind had to pass
on their way to the sea -- or were they passing from the open sea?
Were the ducts pushing air underground, or from the ground?
And in which directions were the banners bellying with wind?
How was the traffic? Traffic roared later in the evening.
The winds from the air-ducts roared along with the traffic.
The underground was made of money, the cost of location
passed to the customer. The gold necklace on the velvet-lined collar
is from the underground also. The maze between the buildings
straitens until the wind gains greater pressure, until it howls.
or from the sides of buildings, or from beneath the awnings.
Rail-cars roared beneath the buildings, stopped and roared again.
The awnings of the shops bellied with wind as if they were sails,
and the banners that drooped from the sides of the buildings
were floodlit and also bellied from the winds underneath them.
And the winds were compressed to an even greater pressure
by the narrowness of the mazes through which the wind had to pass
on their way to the sea -- or were they passing from the open sea?
Were the ducts pushing air underground, or from the ground?
And in which directions were the banners bellying with wind?
How was the traffic? Traffic roared later in the evening.
The winds from the air-ducts roared along with the traffic.
The underground was made of money, the cost of location
passed to the customer. The gold necklace on the velvet-lined collar
is from the underground also. The maze between the buildings
straitens until the wind gains greater pressure, until it howls.
10/01/06 (draft)
The bee-sting as if a splinter of glass had pierced the web of my hand,
the web of skin between the thumb and index finger.
The bee crawled into my sock as if to hide, but when I flicked it from the seam,
it curled into a fetal ball, its wings flattened against its furry abdomen.
I swatted the bee to help it along as it lie on the bathroom floor,
amid the bleach and talcum powder compounded into paste.
And tried to suck the splinter from my hand that felt like fiberglass beneath the skin,
which was the stinger that I first felt beneath the apple tree.
Why didn’t it start this way? Eve reached for the apple, or maybe Adam did.
A bee stung as the fruit was plucked; it felt like glass or eisenglass
the first couple hadn’t known before.
Earth hadn’t erupted, although the seas were made.
Rocks weren’t mixed with glassy or metallic things.
No need for gloves to pluck the fruit, the ones He said to take.
But then a little bee died to tell you something, his emissary, no bad guy.
That’s when it started. You felt a shard inside you, however small.
No matter how you tried to salve yourself, things weren’t the same.
You killed the bee for the little projectile you felt in the web of your hand,
the beginning of conflict.
The apples didn’t taste the same. You’d never been stung before.
I am the priest or pastor of the church that rests upon this story, so hand the till to me.
Charity begins not at home, but with my well-being.
Thus bee-stings begin the making of the salve a body needs.
A world could be built upon the remedy for stings, new stings could be made,
could even come from laboratories.
And rock was made to block the plowshare, and so was glass a splinter.
the web of skin between the thumb and index finger.
The bee crawled into my sock as if to hide, but when I flicked it from the seam,
it curled into a fetal ball, its wings flattened against its furry abdomen.
I swatted the bee to help it along as it lie on the bathroom floor,
amid the bleach and talcum powder compounded into paste.
And tried to suck the splinter from my hand that felt like fiberglass beneath the skin,
which was the stinger that I first felt beneath the apple tree.
Why didn’t it start this way? Eve reached for the apple, or maybe Adam did.
A bee stung as the fruit was plucked; it felt like glass or eisenglass
the first couple hadn’t known before.
Earth hadn’t erupted, although the seas were made.
Rocks weren’t mixed with glassy or metallic things.
No need for gloves to pluck the fruit, the ones He said to take.
But then a little bee died to tell you something, his emissary, no bad guy.
That’s when it started. You felt a shard inside you, however small.
No matter how you tried to salve yourself, things weren’t the same.
You killed the bee for the little projectile you felt in the web of your hand,
the beginning of conflict.
The apples didn’t taste the same. You’d never been stung before.
I am the priest or pastor of the church that rests upon this story, so hand the till to me.
Charity begins not at home, but with my well-being.
Thus bee-stings begin the making of the salve a body needs.
A world could be built upon the remedy for stings, new stings could be made,
could even come from laboratories.
And rock was made to block the plowshare, and so was glass a splinter.
Saturday, August 9, 2008
Art in America (03)
Jackson Pollock committed to memory Guernica’s canvas back
hung in the Guggenheim circa ‘39, then reproduced the thought
on canvas swathes he freely cut to isolate the best of them
until, by career's end, he could afford to forget those figures,
first occasions for his blobs and paint-whips, wounded peasants.
Morris Louis later witnessed swathes of color wallow on overalls
as droopy gesso rainbows. While Christo wrapped a high-rise
in brown paper, and Damien Hirst aspired to split blue whales,
sink their matching halves in picture cubes. Christo addressed
the package to itself, then whales breached its satin ribbons
to flop in Hirst's abbatoir, gigantic, and televised at that.
What avatar transvalues their values? Chris Burden had himself
wounded in the arm, then laid between power lines and water.
Andy Warhol dropped the lady's pump he'd been sketching
for Redbook, to swish among the socialites with a Polaroid.
Someone jumped from floor five far too fast for him to shoot.
Julian Schnabel busted restaurant crockery to plaster shards
on murals buyers paid hand-over-fist to hang in chi-chi houses.
What's to be done? An Austrian has also sliced his foreskin off
for photographs displayed as art-prints in some high-end gallery.
But all that Arnold Schwarz-Kogler was rewarded for his work
was a portrait--bandaged, head to toe--above a brief obit in Time.
Who however will assemble the firing-squad for our next piece?
Where’s the concept artist who can breath life into art
through needless death? Who will get the genius grant
to displace millions? Manufacture suitcase atom bombs?
Poison whole cities with smallpox, inoculate survivors
for reality TV debuts, inaugurate frenzied religious cults
living by lashes alone? Channel heaps of cash to the drug trade?
Numb latchkey kids with white supremacist sex fantasies?
Work millions into epileptic froths, send kamikaze battalions
to the moon? Drop a thermonuclear bomb into a cheese-hole,
and who will call the bluff? Who will poison whole species
for this month’s Art In America, construct malls of mud
in the Amazon, next door to the rainforest Chippendale’s,
or spread sexually transmitted diseases like wildfire,
invent new mutant strains, clone ubermenschen porn stars,
and plasticate their remains for exhibits in corporate lobbies
or pipeline tongueless child prostitutes raised to be janissaries
on Singaporean ship containers, or bury subliminal messages
in heavy metal, urging prepubescent youth to off themselves
if they can’t kill gratuitously at will? Who can top their act?
There’s a message. Even this poem -- loose and lazy catalogue
of atrocities thought or done, imagery arbitrary as windings
through gutters -- goes on as long as you want: this just came in.
hung in the Guggenheim circa ‘39, then reproduced the thought
on canvas swathes he freely cut to isolate the best of them
until, by career's end, he could afford to forget those figures,
first occasions for his blobs and paint-whips, wounded peasants.
Morris Louis later witnessed swathes of color wallow on overalls
as droopy gesso rainbows. While Christo wrapped a high-rise
in brown paper, and Damien Hirst aspired to split blue whales,
sink their matching halves in picture cubes. Christo addressed
the package to itself, then whales breached its satin ribbons
to flop in Hirst's abbatoir, gigantic, and televised at that.
What avatar transvalues their values? Chris Burden had himself
wounded in the arm, then laid between power lines and water.
Andy Warhol dropped the lady's pump he'd been sketching
for Redbook, to swish among the socialites with a Polaroid.
Someone jumped from floor five far too fast for him to shoot.
Julian Schnabel busted restaurant crockery to plaster shards
on murals buyers paid hand-over-fist to hang in chi-chi houses.
What's to be done? An Austrian has also sliced his foreskin off
for photographs displayed as art-prints in some high-end gallery.
But all that Arnold Schwarz-Kogler was rewarded for his work
was a portrait--bandaged, head to toe--above a brief obit in Time.
Who however will assemble the firing-squad for our next piece?
Where’s the concept artist who can breath life into art
through needless death? Who will get the genius grant
to displace millions? Manufacture suitcase atom bombs?
Poison whole cities with smallpox, inoculate survivors
for reality TV debuts, inaugurate frenzied religious cults
living by lashes alone? Channel heaps of cash to the drug trade?
Numb latchkey kids with white supremacist sex fantasies?
Work millions into epileptic froths, send kamikaze battalions
to the moon? Drop a thermonuclear bomb into a cheese-hole,
and who will call the bluff? Who will poison whole species
for this month’s Art In America, construct malls of mud
in the Amazon, next door to the rainforest Chippendale’s,
or spread sexually transmitted diseases like wildfire,
invent new mutant strains, clone ubermenschen porn stars,
and plasticate their remains for exhibits in corporate lobbies
or pipeline tongueless child prostitutes raised to be janissaries
on Singaporean ship containers, or bury subliminal messages
in heavy metal, urging prepubescent youth to off themselves
if they can’t kill gratuitously at will? Who can top their act?
There’s a message. Even this poem -- loose and lazy catalogue
of atrocities thought or done, imagery arbitrary as windings
through gutters -- goes on as long as you want: this just came in.
Sunday, August 3, 2008
2/24/06
The kraft paper kite plunges into the kitchen garden
but doesn't bruise the bean-stalks or the squash.
The kite of sticks and strings rides the air and ripples
noisily. All edicts against kite-flying have fallen.
You can't disinter mandrake roots or other tubers
or pluck the Turkish fig before it's dried and candied over
enough to settle into a market stall, whether in a bazaar
or the supermarket's whole foods section. Certain names
for the deity may also be off-limits, entertainer's jibes
at El or Alilat. Purple phalloi of some plants are suppressed.
Even the turnip piled in the truck can appear concupiscent,
once the dirt is shaken from its rugged beard. The rhizome,
impossible to find, hops without a central nervous system.
A facsimile sent by email barely squeezes through the lines
of the telephone, reduced to dots and dashes.
The last telegram was sent yesterday,
and the cocaine-fueled raging day-trader ruined the ticker-tape.
Bring a pretty glass bell and someone is bound to smash it.
Treaties are composed to be broken as symphonies to be played.
Silence and random sounds were meant for compositions,
the space between a note is shaped like a sand-dune.
*****************************************************
I could feel the delicacy of the thing in the package
inside the big cardboard envelope, an earring for a fairy
a small fairy whose wings were spread in full flight
a pendant in the shape of a fairy dangling from the ear-lobe
It felt like one earring, maybe two, but not likely
and that maybe fairy-earrings were attached to a chain
a slender chain pouring from the hand that dispensed it
to which the earrings were attached, very delicate fairies of beaten gold
or gold-plated brass that I threw in the shark's cage in the warehouse,
its steel latches beaten into unpredictable shapes that didn't fit well,
and threw the heavier gifts on top of the earrings or whatever they were.
This is what happens to vulnerable children, with weak heads and butterfly stomachs.
but doesn't bruise the bean-stalks or the squash.
The kite of sticks and strings rides the air and ripples
noisily. All edicts against kite-flying have fallen.
You can't disinter mandrake roots or other tubers
or pluck the Turkish fig before it's dried and candied over
enough to settle into a market stall, whether in a bazaar
or the supermarket's whole foods section. Certain names
for the deity may also be off-limits, entertainer's jibes
at El or Alilat. Purple phalloi of some plants are suppressed.
Even the turnip piled in the truck can appear concupiscent,
once the dirt is shaken from its rugged beard. The rhizome,
impossible to find, hops without a central nervous system.
A facsimile sent by email barely squeezes through the lines
of the telephone, reduced to dots and dashes.
The last telegram was sent yesterday,
and the cocaine-fueled raging day-trader ruined the ticker-tape.
Bring a pretty glass bell and someone is bound to smash it.
Treaties are composed to be broken as symphonies to be played.
Silence and random sounds were meant for compositions,
the space between a note is shaped like a sand-dune.
*****************************************************
I could feel the delicacy of the thing in the package
inside the big cardboard envelope, an earring for a fairy
a small fairy whose wings were spread in full flight
a pendant in the shape of a fairy dangling from the ear-lobe
It felt like one earring, maybe two, but not likely
and that maybe fairy-earrings were attached to a chain
a slender chain pouring from the hand that dispensed it
to which the earrings were attached, very delicate fairies of beaten gold
or gold-plated brass that I threw in the shark's cage in the warehouse,
its steel latches beaten into unpredictable shapes that didn't fit well,
and threw the heavier gifts on top of the earrings or whatever they were.
This is what happens to vulnerable children, with weak heads and butterfly stomachs.
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