How cold the House of Lights is by the entrance ramp,
all that beveled glass in the empty interior darkened.
And they have tried to sell their surplus light outside,
so much surplus light they'll give you blinds for it,
those wooden slats and plastic razor clamshells
ungirdled from their drawstrings. Designer lamps crane
above invisible readers: in the land of the not-living,
a family dog teeths a slipper from Dad's foot.
Dust collects on this light that has no buyers,
light that would illuminate a wound or tooth
abandoned to the ruin of the mouth,
light that would brighten the studio, surprise the prowler,
spills from the multi-branched candelabra.
Prospects keep driving up the exit to the sea.
No one wants to buy this light, even if it's cheap.
Chinese lamps, for newlyweds or bookish students,
drop into rustling paper circumferences.
Dimmer switches turn off nothing. Copper forks
that would have connected them to households
green before they find the jacks that are their home.
Track-lights cannot illuminate the artwork
whose tiny flaws in execution dimness softens
in the home of the executive. No one will come
to the House of Lights. With potential buyers gone,
sundry cords and their plugs drop back in boxes
like serpents into pits. And were these lamps eyes,
they would dim with vacancy, alone in cardboard sleeves.
Each filament that a frosty cataract of glass has curbed
trembles as again another driver disregards it.
Sunday, June 8, 2008
Playstation (04)
I’m writing down ideas she told
her husband behind, and her son
with a Playstation. The Bacchae
couldn’t distract, Pentheus a bone-bag,
his rival Dionysus lithe and girlish
among his maiden acolytes,
who wildly roll their eyes back
as she scribbles on a notepad.
They're dressed in rags and garlands,
even the burghermeisters of Thebes,
old men who make fools of themselves,
shillelaghs aswing in each gnarled fist,
beyond the town no boundaries,
no perforations, when solids dissolve,
where it’s rumored adders suckle women.
The bars of Thebes’ lockup bend like rubber.
In his hands dissolves a whole city
in pixels, after the Playstation's hero
has leaped a canyon of sky-scrapers,
tiny giant not to be outdone by mother.
Dionysus, Asiatic god of abandon,
doesn’t need to try. Tiny giant,
Phosphorescent keypad. Tiny notebook,
ideas jotted down beyond borders.
The play is some dry-as-dust codex,
the god’s antagonist a bone-bag.
The bacchantes writhe on the floor
like snake-handlers or holy-rollers.
All depends upon the screen's angle.
When her son turns the Playstation
the misty metropolis his giant scaled
dissolves, a blue screen of death.
Dionysus only waves a thrysus
while she’s writing her ideas down
as the bacchantes twist on the floor,
for the son, who when he grows,
will not confine ideas to Playstations
nor to buildings vanished like holograms
sunk in credit cards. His encryptions
will raise or bring the buildings down,
her idea first: archive it on a notepad.
her husband behind, and her son
with a Playstation. The Bacchae
couldn’t distract, Pentheus a bone-bag,
his rival Dionysus lithe and girlish
among his maiden acolytes,
who wildly roll their eyes back
as she scribbles on a notepad.
They're dressed in rags and garlands,
even the burghermeisters of Thebes,
old men who make fools of themselves,
shillelaghs aswing in each gnarled fist,
beyond the town no boundaries,
no perforations, when solids dissolve,
where it’s rumored adders suckle women.
The bars of Thebes’ lockup bend like rubber.
In his hands dissolves a whole city
in pixels, after the Playstation's hero
has leaped a canyon of sky-scrapers,
tiny giant not to be outdone by mother.
Dionysus, Asiatic god of abandon,
doesn’t need to try. Tiny giant,
Phosphorescent keypad. Tiny notebook,
ideas jotted down beyond borders.
The play is some dry-as-dust codex,
the god’s antagonist a bone-bag.
The bacchantes writhe on the floor
like snake-handlers or holy-rollers.
All depends upon the screen's angle.
When her son turns the Playstation
the misty metropolis his giant scaled
dissolves, a blue screen of death.
Dionysus only waves a thrysus
while she’s writing her ideas down
as the bacchantes twist on the floor,
for the son, who when he grows,
will not confine ideas to Playstations
nor to buildings vanished like holograms
sunk in credit cards. His encryptions
will raise or bring the buildings down,
her idea first: archive it on a notepad.
Saturday, June 7, 2008
ABOUT DEAN REED, DROWNED IN THE GDR, 1989*
It took lots to get me to float in this alien pond
and not hear Prussian anymore, nor the rustling in parks,
starlings in them tagged like hospital patients,
and the homing of birds and men to familiar destinations, food,
the reason for this singsong, and the public sounds I made
also not to hear. It takes a moment to pass the controversy.
A block of ice has melted over me
and the tides shift, the sound of boot steps enormous
to my rooted ears, through the styli of my fingernails,
antennae extended post mortem, while the solid melts into air.
Other than an article or two
in those illustrated western tabloids, my name lifts
from March earth like a boot sole, like impressions
of the wrench and compass. And as to grasses,
how can you tell where they'll seed in these mists
that close above the hordes, and these peat-bogs,
democratic, although they save embarrassments too,
a hangman's victim for example, his neck snapped,
or scapegoat in barbarian trousers, curled
in earth like a shell, the snail-like dampness of his manhood
crusted up and substituted --
I couldn't figure out the motor's tricky double-time:
and the basket that hauled my corpse from the pond scum
creaked like a Valkyrie. Stateless,
I heard the crowd's puzzlement, the compass of the engineer
lose the gravity that wedded it to the worker's wrench.
The air must've smelled like manure, coal, sulfur,
a corpse veiled in a meadow.
A grey foam floated over miles of Teutons
where the smoke and ash of Karl Marx-Stadt met Ohio
while I fingerpicked, to Western chords, the Internationale.
I mostly let my wife talk to reporters: my wife
was also my adopted country.
Of that newsweekly, from which my counterpart blazed
technicolor with his dyed sideburns shaved
and buck private's uniform: his rumors in this world,
where they find the scapegoat beside me
with soiled trousers on, now make as much of a racket
as the music above, requiring no ears to listen--
no entertainers in the stars, how the least reverberation strikes us!
and not hear Prussian anymore, nor the rustling in parks,
starlings in them tagged like hospital patients,
and the homing of birds and men to familiar destinations, food,
the reason for this singsong, and the public sounds I made
also not to hear. It takes a moment to pass the controversy.
A block of ice has melted over me
and the tides shift, the sound of boot steps enormous
to my rooted ears, through the styli of my fingernails,
antennae extended post mortem, while the solid melts into air.
Other than an article or two
in those illustrated western tabloids, my name lifts
from March earth like a boot sole, like impressions
of the wrench and compass. And as to grasses,
how can you tell where they'll seed in these mists
that close above the hordes, and these peat-bogs,
democratic, although they save embarrassments too,
a hangman's victim for example, his neck snapped,
or scapegoat in barbarian trousers, curled
in earth like a shell, the snail-like dampness of his manhood
crusted up and substituted --
I couldn't figure out the motor's tricky double-time:
and the basket that hauled my corpse from the pond scum
creaked like a Valkyrie. Stateless,
I heard the crowd's puzzlement, the compass of the engineer
lose the gravity that wedded it to the worker's wrench.
The air must've smelled like manure, coal, sulfur,
a corpse veiled in a meadow.
A grey foam floated over miles of Teutons
where the smoke and ash of Karl Marx-Stadt met Ohio
while I fingerpicked, to Western chords, the Internationale.
I mostly let my wife talk to reporters: my wife
was also my adopted country.
Of that newsweekly, from which my counterpart blazed
technicolor with his dyed sideburns shaved
and buck private's uniform: his rumors in this world,
where they find the scapegoat beside me
with soiled trousers on, now make as much of a racket
as the music above, requiring no ears to listen--
no entertainers in the stars, how the least reverberation strikes us!
Escravo do Sol (05)
Escravo do sol she declared herself, this widow
sunbathing topless along the Algarve coastline,
though locals did not think her so becoming,
sprawled languidly across the sand like that,
time enough to waste life away on a blanket,
the sun brazing her skin less the flushed Lusophone
peasant red of vineyards than a bitter brown,
cocoa butter packed in wrinkles and crow’s feet.
She fattened herself with little fishes or sardines
grilled before they’re gutted on a steaming plate.
The spouse's long committment to the grave
gave her freedom: so this slavery to the sun
means to fling restraints away, breasts and belly
spread for all to see, her bracelets chains snapped
to flash as brassily as toys. When she writhes
they rattle with the dryness of a reptile’s backbone.
How far a tan has come from being labor’s curse.
Take the scars of one Angolan, lost in Lisbon,
his facial markings puffed like bees' welts.
Scars or tans or stains can grow up with us.
Stripes across the body can heal to welts
indelible for life, winestains mar the cheek,
beauty spots sew a crucial flaw to the heart,
the duskiest skin burn to third-degree blisters.
C’est la morte the woman maybe wheezed.
Who came to her funeral a generation later?
Did her children or her children’s children speak?
Certainly her libertinage was well provided for:
An annuity cooking her in unguent for years,
in state her carcinoma doesn’t look half-bad,
those morticians magicians. Even a padre
could be tempted to call the face-job a miracle.
In her last days she hobbled the boardwalk
with a cane from her hillside bungalow,
and arriving at "the great mother the sea,"
dropped, dumb fertility idol chipped in stone,
among half-naked partiers heaped on blankets
between night-clubs, ahead of Nordic seekers
in transit to Marrakesh, Maroc, or Moor-land
(hapless Othello’s address before plucked
by the Venetian high command for Cyprus,
copper island, metal of Venus slaves mined).
While in Mauretania, Swedes are appalled
by scars on copper-toned children, escravos do sol,
the sun so strong among sub-Saharan forges
any man-made wound the children improvise,
such wounds as highly prized as chains.
sunbathing topless along the Algarve coastline,
though locals did not think her so becoming,
sprawled languidly across the sand like that,
time enough to waste life away on a blanket,
the sun brazing her skin less the flushed Lusophone
peasant red of vineyards than a bitter brown,
cocoa butter packed in wrinkles and crow’s feet.
She fattened herself with little fishes or sardines
grilled before they’re gutted on a steaming plate.
The spouse's long committment to the grave
gave her freedom: so this slavery to the sun
means to fling restraints away, breasts and belly
spread for all to see, her bracelets chains snapped
to flash as brassily as toys. When she writhes
they rattle with the dryness of a reptile’s backbone.
How far a tan has come from being labor’s curse.
Take the scars of one Angolan, lost in Lisbon,
his facial markings puffed like bees' welts.
Scars or tans or stains can grow up with us.
Stripes across the body can heal to welts
indelible for life, winestains mar the cheek,
beauty spots sew a crucial flaw to the heart,
the duskiest skin burn to third-degree blisters.
C’est la morte the woman maybe wheezed.
Who came to her funeral a generation later?
Did her children or her children’s children speak?
Certainly her libertinage was well provided for:
An annuity cooking her in unguent for years,
in state her carcinoma doesn’t look half-bad,
those morticians magicians. Even a padre
could be tempted to call the face-job a miracle.
In her last days she hobbled the boardwalk
with a cane from her hillside bungalow,
and arriving at "the great mother the sea,"
dropped, dumb fertility idol chipped in stone,
among half-naked partiers heaped on blankets
between night-clubs, ahead of Nordic seekers
in transit to Marrakesh, Maroc, or Moor-land
(hapless Othello’s address before plucked
by the Venetian high command for Cyprus,
copper island, metal of Venus slaves mined).
While in Mauretania, Swedes are appalled
by scars on copper-toned children, escravos do sol,
the sun so strong among sub-Saharan forges
any man-made wound the children improvise,
such wounds as highly prized as chains.
Friday, June 6, 2008
The Trace (old, 2002)
As soon as I heard the Yugoslav police
had stormed Slobodan’s suburban villa
that Mirijana and daughter were with him
(a bullet-proof limousine in a side-entrance)
I thought of Mirjana’s Antigone fixation
then about Maximilian and Carlotta in Mexico
and their besiegement, how they must’ve
also heard the world crash on their heads
in columns of fire or armed police escorts,
and then the question of its sound occurred
then those two attorneys with killer mastiffs
maiming the lesbian soccer coach in a foyer
caught in Mendocino with a bundle of cash
and from all evidence in flight from the law,
shooting through Sonoma County’s valley
past wineries in the pastel guise of Tuscan villas
(behind them bine-stems stitching the fields up)
until they fly through Mendocino’s piny altitudes
to lose the trace, until the next news dispatch
reveals them slightly dowdy sans habitual tweed
while the day-glo orange of their prison tunics
recalls the days of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh
and his flock, stray children of industrialists
casually poisoning Chinese buffets in food courts
when not shuttling between Oregon and Nepal –
but their complexion is an embarrassing fire
highlighting their corpulence, their gin blossoms,
or the blight of rosaceae or acne vulgaris
to confirm the physical expression of depravity.
But surely in separate cells they relive the spark
of attraction felt in law school or the pro bono circuit
before they go through hell for one another--
and perhaps a ruby blush has never left their faces.
had stormed Slobodan’s suburban villa
that Mirijana and daughter were with him
(a bullet-proof limousine in a side-entrance)
I thought of Mirjana’s Antigone fixation
then about Maximilian and Carlotta in Mexico
and their besiegement, how they must’ve
also heard the world crash on their heads
in columns of fire or armed police escorts,
and then the question of its sound occurred
then those two attorneys with killer mastiffs
maiming the lesbian soccer coach in a foyer
caught in Mendocino with a bundle of cash
and from all evidence in flight from the law,
shooting through Sonoma County’s valley
past wineries in the pastel guise of Tuscan villas
(behind them bine-stems stitching the fields up)
until they fly through Mendocino’s piny altitudes
to lose the trace, until the next news dispatch
reveals them slightly dowdy sans habitual tweed
while the day-glo orange of their prison tunics
recalls the days of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh
and his flock, stray children of industrialists
casually poisoning Chinese buffets in food courts
when not shuttling between Oregon and Nepal –
but their complexion is an embarrassing fire
highlighting their corpulence, their gin blossoms,
or the blight of rosaceae or acne vulgaris
to confirm the physical expression of depravity.
But surely in separate cells they relive the spark
of attraction felt in law school or the pro bono circuit
before they go through hell for one another--
and perhaps a ruby blush has never left their faces.
Deaf (Old Draft)
I couldn't hear. The trumpet
working into the ear-drum
Was blocked, stony silence.
When I knocked, nothing,
No bells nor whistles,
only resonance through rock.
The ears were blocked--
the doctor said they wouldn't drain.
Impurities of eye and ear,
How long it took to drain
ears of what guarded them.
The steps and porches
Over which I poured solution.
As grass grew, a solution
Bubbled to unblock the wax.
The porches would be free.
My solution was water-peroxide,
To pour above the ear-steps,
The porches, whorls over bone-
The earwax blocking my canals.
The drums of the ear unmoved.
I lay at my side like a king
in his mattress-grave of flowers.
The drunks liked them.
their sides pressed to earth
to hear worms bore, roots latch,
while air blew above the other ear.
Where they are kings in the shade
maples rustle like cotillion dresses.
or creak with more kings beneath.
They will never tear the tree down,
cut one in flushed sections. Earwigs
do not find home in ears of men,
whose deafness is magisterial.
One possesses earth for riches,
Another presides above the earth.
I heard radio, but not my thoughts,
over space, like a harbinger,
or some clock, inside opaque.
Hollow is a relative term--
fishes think they swim a void.
What we claim as dense is fluid.
Even windowpanes flow,
although an inch may be a life-span.
My ear canals were stuffed.
A wall of wax refused to budge
No matter how many drops
Rolled down the porches-
I couldn't engage my surroundings.
The ear canals of the king
filled with medication in his garden.
And he fell asleep to the rain.
He wanted to name birds above
--they were older than the trees--
but with each porch inaccessible
he listened to the worms.
I lay at my side, solution
In my ear, medication fizzling.
My ears rung with their messages.
How long a single tone can last.
not dumb, just deaf. Signals
on the data stream spiked over me.
I’ve missed your voice.
working into the ear-drum
Was blocked, stony silence.
When I knocked, nothing,
No bells nor whistles,
only resonance through rock.
The ears were blocked--
the doctor said they wouldn't drain.
Impurities of eye and ear,
How long it took to drain
ears of what guarded them.
The steps and porches
Over which I poured solution.
As grass grew, a solution
Bubbled to unblock the wax.
The porches would be free.
My solution was water-peroxide,
To pour above the ear-steps,
The porches, whorls over bone-
The earwax blocking my canals.
The drums of the ear unmoved.
I lay at my side like a king
in his mattress-grave of flowers.
The drunks liked them.
their sides pressed to earth
to hear worms bore, roots latch,
while air blew above the other ear.
Where they are kings in the shade
maples rustle like cotillion dresses.
or creak with more kings beneath.
They will never tear the tree down,
cut one in flushed sections. Earwigs
do not find home in ears of men,
whose deafness is magisterial.
One possesses earth for riches,
Another presides above the earth.
I heard radio, but not my thoughts,
over space, like a harbinger,
or some clock, inside opaque.
Hollow is a relative term--
fishes think they swim a void.
What we claim as dense is fluid.
Even windowpanes flow,
although an inch may be a life-span.
My ear canals were stuffed.
A wall of wax refused to budge
No matter how many drops
Rolled down the porches-
I couldn't engage my surroundings.
The ear canals of the king
filled with medication in his garden.
And he fell asleep to the rain.
He wanted to name birds above
--they were older than the trees--
but with each porch inaccessible
he listened to the worms.
I lay at my side, solution
In my ear, medication fizzling.
My ears rung with their messages.
How long a single tone can last.
not dumb, just deaf. Signals
on the data stream spiked over me.
I’ve missed your voice.
Hypothesis 10
How the flamen dialis would have loved these baseball games,
no doubt however let down by the lack of public executions
on the pitcher's mound, between live music and the little dogs
being fed Frisbees. What would they make of country music
having only known hymns and funeral dirges, accompanied
by skin drums, tabors, kitharas? How about the heavier metals
forged into pots and pans and car parts, a world
in which a trash can lid's a shield without a sword?
How completely strange the music arriving through the cone
they would have tried to wear in the hotel lobby perhaps
or as sun-hats? Do they ask why approachers recoil?
What would the pagans make of rockets, bibles, underwear,
fishnet stockings, cable networks, internets, net vs. gross pay
unlike the tithes for campaigns -- and how about highways
and talk shows, and in retrospect, would they appreciate
Johnny Carson's salubrious, self-congratulatory wit, how
would they access it other than by scanning special offers
on late-night infomercials, in a language that they could not read?
Would they instinctually prefer the Latin Leno to Gothic Letterman?
Would they master correctly placing the video cassette in the slot ?
What if they didn't carry plastic money in their street robes?
What if they needed to bring their ceremonial vestments to the cleaners?
Would they know when to ask for starch or for no starch?
Would they try to pay with dinari a Flavian emperor had minted
or the big gold ones the Antonines paid them under the table once?
Would they be mesmerized by the holograms on a Mastercard?
Do you think they'd want to see Caligula in the revival houses?
Would the orgy scenes recall the wrestling in a circus maximus?
Traveling together in a minivan, what do they make of cul-de-sacs?
What's their use, if you already read your destiny in a sun-dial?
Are bird's eggs yanked from nests but yet unbroken still portents,
especially when they're lying on yellow traffic stripes, not
in residential neighborhoods? And if they're blue, not speckled?
What do they make of racoons as they struggle through dumpsters?
Can they make sense of waffles, manhole covers, toilet seats,
Are they bewildered and amazed on road-trips by the automatic ones?
Are they seduced by the fragrance of the liquid soap in the dispenser,
and having confused it with nectar, do they lick it from their palms?
And if they don't see a cloud in the sky, does that mean no more omens
And does that mean a hare escapes a hawk's clutch or an orchid wilts,
That fortunes can't be read in cows' guts, that life doesn't begin again
In gouts of blood, that the crotches of oak trees will refuse to flower,
Forever and ever? Why pre-board? Can't a ferry go fast enough?
When they close their eyes, do they dream or do commercials appear?
no doubt however let down by the lack of public executions
on the pitcher's mound, between live music and the little dogs
being fed Frisbees. What would they make of country music
having only known hymns and funeral dirges, accompanied
by skin drums, tabors, kitharas? How about the heavier metals
forged into pots and pans and car parts, a world
in which a trash can lid's a shield without a sword?
How completely strange the music arriving through the cone
they would have tried to wear in the hotel lobby perhaps
or as sun-hats? Do they ask why approachers recoil?
What would the pagans make of rockets, bibles, underwear,
fishnet stockings, cable networks, internets, net vs. gross pay
unlike the tithes for campaigns -- and how about highways
and talk shows, and in retrospect, would they appreciate
Johnny Carson's salubrious, self-congratulatory wit, how
would they access it other than by scanning special offers
on late-night infomercials, in a language that they could not read?
Would they instinctually prefer the Latin Leno to Gothic Letterman?
Would they master correctly placing the video cassette in the slot ?
What if they didn't carry plastic money in their street robes?
What if they needed to bring their ceremonial vestments to the cleaners?
Would they know when to ask for starch or for no starch?
Would they try to pay with dinari a Flavian emperor had minted
or the big gold ones the Antonines paid them under the table once?
Would they be mesmerized by the holograms on a Mastercard?
Do you think they'd want to see Caligula in the revival houses?
Would the orgy scenes recall the wrestling in a circus maximus?
Traveling together in a minivan, what do they make of cul-de-sacs?
What's their use, if you already read your destiny in a sun-dial?
Are bird's eggs yanked from nests but yet unbroken still portents,
especially when they're lying on yellow traffic stripes, not
in residential neighborhoods? And if they're blue, not speckled?
What do they make of racoons as they struggle through dumpsters?
Can they make sense of waffles, manhole covers, toilet seats,
Are they bewildered and amazed on road-trips by the automatic ones?
Are they seduced by the fragrance of the liquid soap in the dispenser,
and having confused it with nectar, do they lick it from their palms?
And if they don't see a cloud in the sky, does that mean no more omens
And does that mean a hare escapes a hawk's clutch or an orchid wilts,
That fortunes can't be read in cows' guts, that life doesn't begin again
In gouts of blood, that the crotches of oak trees will refuse to flower,
Forever and ever? Why pre-board? Can't a ferry go fast enough?
When they close their eyes, do they dream or do commercials appear?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
