IÕve got a piece of English stuck in my teeth.
Ah, good friend, mirror,
no semblance of green
screwed from the algae of
Éshould I say memory?
ItÕs so predictable,
like instant oatmeal
tossing off little bromo-lariats (halos, hats, high-beams)
like so many Remuses and Romuluses
sucking at the wolf-tit of that flat-faced Quaker.
LanguageÕs meant to squeeze out I-beams
of laughter,
leaving the peals of the flophouse bananas
turning brown.
Brown brown brown
brown brown brown
brown brown brown brown
brown.
MagistrateÕs larder:
thatÕs where the wigs are kept;
where dandelion trimmings
and the heave of last yearÕs noodles
do their damndest
to commandeer the commander
to dear-me the antelope, the popcorn,
and the all-but-useless first baseman for the Minnesota Twins.
I can still think Indian names after all these years:
Chappaqua, Mahopac, Mamaroneck,
Quinnipiac, William Least Heat-Moon, Lord Shaftesbury,
running southwest by northeast by 12 noon
and a hot baguette stuffed with chicken tikka
where no man sits, let the pigeons cluster.
Sitting Bull/General George Armstrong Custer.
Gemini/hegemony.
Why, every link in the chainÕs a shackle. (Virtual.)
(I got that from Michael Palmer.)
Rowdy as a hooligan
(or is it an hooligan? do they deserve grammaticality?)
at a Leeds United match.
WhereÕs the comeuppance?
Seated on the aisle, with two big, soggy cups of lager,
thatÕs where.
He never said heÕd be on time and never on time he is.
Which makes the setting of watches by his morning constitutional
an act of pure contingency
like the blowhole of the humpback whale
which may or may not appear
above the waterline
on 7 July, 2007
when I plan to be starboard side,
a small vessel named Starbuck or Cleetus,
calling Astoria, Oregon its home
and charging a whopping 25 dollars
for an hour of humpback contingency.
IÕve had better deals in Ely, Nevada.
IÕve had a longer, harder headache
just walking to the store and back
for a bottle of tequila and some smokes.
Though I donÕt smoke and should never have gone out in the first place.
I knew IÕd find comeuppance and his soggy cups,
walking, smoking, pondering the relation of thought to action
or, possibly, acting out the relation of acts to ideas.
HeÕs yet to realize the position of art.
(It ainÕt first base with the Twins.)
What ratchets there are, are ratcheting.
For every tooth an increased security warning.
My systolic pressure is on the move.
It has in its mindÕs-eye
a little cottage on a lake
with a verdant afterthought and a bridge
from the pure to the practical.
Out back thereÕs a neat parcel of compost,
a small fire, a cooler of beer, and a bucket (presumably fish).
When friends come to visit – comeuppance for example –
my systolic pressure has much to offer
but nevertheless does not
Éoffer, that is.
So
I shimmy up the poll.
From least wanted
to most wanted.
Plastered all over town.
A reward on my head. I replace it with a knit cap.
The chill has frosted my skull
with a skill untested in fall.
Lumbering, then,
for a brisk constitutional,
I regain the feeling in my hands, robbed
some time ago by a trick-or-treater
dolled-up as a disenfranchised exoskeleton.
He reaches brazenly – I mean BRAZENLY –
he reached into my left hip pocket.
Removed the cue ball.
Replaced it with a knit cap.
Jammed up the whole mechanism.
I went numb.
Runs in my family.
We succumb to tremors, to delight,
to negligence.
In our defense, we are plenty indifferent.
There are those whose malady is complaining
and those whose malady is maladies.
We are in the latter camp,
a small fire, a cooler of beer, and a bucket (presumably fish).
There is something (is there not?)
about rod-caught fish–
no nets for me, Jacques Plante –
fish roasting on a real wood fire?
Yes, there is.
With potatoes dug from the earth,
a small handful of radishes.
A handful of red radishes.
Handful of reddish radishes.
A handful of red radishes.
I could say that all night long
(and nearly did),
singing the phrases of the praises
of the glistening red orbs
sheened with rain water
beside the ripe pickings.
The oft-neglected greens too.
See what I mean about negligence?
They are peppery and cruel,
demanding of saliva
and a balance of bibb or butter
or red leaf romaine.
Surely there is no better reward
for having dug in the earth
in the hotifying sun.
Surely there is no better excuse.
Magnanimous though I may be,
though they may be –
those glistening red orbs –
a handful of red radishes;
they canÕt help but be magnanimous!
nor I.
Still we sob when the mercury dips.
We remove our curling, pruning toes
from the banks of the wetifying river
which runs the gamut of emotions
from magnanimous to sobbing;
which runs the company into the ground.
Silting the heart (an odd expression surely,
but warranted, given the circumstances,
wouldnÕt you agree?)
Salting the wounds of the heart.
Baiting the breath
and allowing chandeliers to swing freely.
Allowing all interpretations to float freely,
to insinuate and disagree.
More than that,
they unzip their trousers
and piss on the roaring fire
beside a cooler of beer, and a bucket (presumably fish).
Last April,
amidst reports
of disintegrating share prices
and a shoal of muskies
besotted beside
the sight of sycamores,
the crash course began:
first, the lagoon
(at least thatÕs what it says in my notes,
but IÕve wondered, ever since,
if it hadnÕt been legume).
Revisited by the creeping sense of hegemony:
by the feeling that we have no choice.
The man who plays first for the Twins
will always be the man who playÕs first for the Twins.
ThereÕs no getting around it.
Rapturous melodies are always wafting.
Sometimes, though, itÕs swooping,
crashing, divebombing, thrusting, piercing,
invading, debilitating, absolutely horrific smashing
that we want.
Sometimes, whether we want it or not,
thatÕs what we need.
Like eggs.
Or the calcium supplements my wife brings me at bedtime
while I laze atop the bedsheets, book in hand,
while I remedy the reading I do in the daytime
with the reading I do at night.
ItÕs a matter of contamination.
But isnÕt everything?
I am contaminated with the genes of my parents,
with love for my wife
(and, I like to think, I contaminate her too;
thatÕs why she brings me calcium).
FactoryÕs release their spillage
into the mighty Mississippi
or Regents Canal.
Stabled horses.
Yogurt.
Grime.
I laugh at my insipidness; as it is cause for joy.
Shallow are the shoals
of serendipitous thought.
What I first thought was rapture
was rapture indeed.
But not mine. Not now.
Someone elseÕs, at a later date,
or long ago and wouldÕve been forgotten
if it hadnÕt been for this stupid poem.
Why the urge to calcify
this little moment or that:
Ōthe night thickensÉ
besides, the dayÕs reign ought to
endÉĶ And end it does. But why?
I asked.
Why the urge to calcify?
This stupid poem,
that implausible book,
the film I saw last Tuesday night
on DVD, and the extras,
including original trailer,
outtakes, crew filmography,
and the making-of documentary
(more interesting than the film itself),
the questions I might ask of them are legion.
Sometimes, one thinks, in moments of illumination:
better to let sleeping dogs lie
beside the white chickens,
cooler of beer, bucket of fish.
I rented a chain saw
to lay down the Beech
laying down a carpet of leaves
at the foot of the lake.
The leaves, as they rotted,
turned crisp granules of sand
into compost. The stations of footing
disintegrate thus.
We raked and we raked
and we raked in the sands,
like greens keeperÕs daughters
in Georgia or France.
We rounded the base paths
from cabana to boat dock
with shipping and shaping in mind.
The wind and deciduous decided against us.
The Beech laid its carpet of rot on the beach.
And I, my own daughter,
made a path to the water
for dipping and diving
and tying the boat to the dock with a cord.
This late-Autumn classic stretched well past the bed time
of all of the trees which neighbored the Beech.
It seemed like a test –
this seventh-inning stretch –
where we re-laid the lines
of foul play and fair.
So each man would know
where he stood from then on.
The man who plays first for the Twins.
Criminal accusations fly:
there is a bus that used to stop here;
there was a bus that still stops here;
there will be a bus that never stops here.
What I know about buses
could fit in the back seat
of a Buick LeSabre.
Because the knowing of something
can never fit comfortably
into the thing that is known.
(I got that from Wallace Stevens,
even if he never said it
exactly.)
And what I didnÕt get from Wallace Stevens
could fit in the head
of another man
who reads poetry less.
And bully for him!
(I got that from Frank OÕHara.)
IÕm the first to admit
IÕm the child of my reading.
ThatÕs why I never read
what I write.
Instead I laze by the shores
of the burbling creek
or I axe at the trunk
of the de-leafing Beech
or I poke at the fish
of the calcified reef
and deposit them, live, in a bucket.
And, absolutely, oh yes,
I eat what I catch.
You can hear them still swimming
in my belly.
29 December 2004
at the MLA off site reading
Philadelphia /
14 July 2005
Bastille Day
London /
30 July
London