When the world was real, I had Biddle Street,
its smell of grime and gravy, its ghosts dressed
like cathedrals, its beggars dressed like ghosts,
the concrete hill that was my life
with the monument on top done up in purple
when the ravens came to town and I had left
to drink lemonade with Sufis and eat oranges with virgins
who wrote ancient Chinese channelings in sand
in yellow houses in the deep evangelical South;
I was simply chasing purple, the shade I finally found
when I saw Jesus tip his titty dancer Mary
in an all-you-can-eat casino in North Las Vegas.
How much easier it was, then, to know what was actual,
for it glinted like a crystal in my hand, reunited with my cells
and now it swims before my eyes whenever I close them.
It's a cry that can't be heard inside this box
that's now the world, that collects all the facts
but not that purple, the bird itself, its arc of flight.
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
After Falling Off the Wagon to Read a Newspaper
Hobos are the unacknowledged legislators of the world,
Hippies of the drum circle its armies of the night,
the Unemployed turned anarchist the new-school bourgeoisie,
the throng of rude unimpressed Youth the new blue light.
More drop into this sewage from the ordinary every day
as jobs, homes, health care lapses
learning, as they fall, how to live with so much less,
less stuff, fewer lies, not as much irradiated food,
to fill the abyss of self-esteem with something else,
to look with different eyes at the world, to observe
how close the stars are, and how no corner's disconnected
from another, how strong one is for walking on two feet.
Nearby, more people wait to fall off, afraid
of what they'll become when their vestiges of order
crumble, afraid of the smile the free wear,
their shabby clothes. The clock is like a timebomb,
so they hold on to the moments:
the posing models, the decadent gadgets,
the knowing that their paradise must end.
When you've been branded by the hot coals held by Satan
you tend to trust him, you take solace in your pitiful share
of corruption, and overlook the sacrificed souls of children
as it's all a game, until the reaper comes
and reminds you this was your choice all along.
Hippies of the drum circle its armies of the night,
the Unemployed turned anarchist the new-school bourgeoisie,
the throng of rude unimpressed Youth the new blue light.
More drop into this sewage from the ordinary every day
as jobs, homes, health care lapses
learning, as they fall, how to live with so much less,
less stuff, fewer lies, not as much irradiated food,
to fill the abyss of self-esteem with something else,
to look with different eyes at the world, to observe
how close the stars are, and how no corner's disconnected
from another, how strong one is for walking on two feet.
Nearby, more people wait to fall off, afraid
of what they'll become when their vestiges of order
crumble, afraid of the smile the free wear,
their shabby clothes. The clock is like a timebomb,
so they hold on to the moments:
the posing models, the decadent gadgets,
the knowing that their paradise must end.
When you've been branded by the hot coals held by Satan
you tend to trust him, you take solace in your pitiful share
of corruption, and overlook the sacrificed souls of children
as it's all a game, until the reaper comes
and reminds you this was your choice all along.
Monday, January 2, 2012
Poet's Block
thermal lint
rusted bulb...
wherever you are
you are inside the poem
it lets you in
its sacred space
to show there is no other you
in all that is
and then it pulls away
like the sun revealing glass
all walls and windows
through which the veils of smoke are clear as crystals
Sunday, January 1, 2012
New Year's Day Football
The shock of the clock
turning as I turn
covering as I leap
for what may be my last
hail mary
to haul in the thing
reality contests
its minutes of bliss
too small
for my chasm of heart
beating
turning as I turn
covering as I leap
for what may be my last
hail mary
to haul in the thing
reality contests
its minutes of bliss
too small
for my chasm of heart
beating
Saturday, December 31, 2011
My Year in Review
I wash the scent off of 2011,
an Oscar Wilde saint with a past,
the lines, by El Greco, all black.
It's time, to leave behind
some hostages of the mind:
bowling in Manhattan, swimming in the Yucatan,
visiting psych wards and tooth removers,
humid graduations and ice-cold reunions,
afternoon mescal in the West, St. Germaine back East,
the cheers for the Bruins and for De Vere on the silver screen,
the elegies for capitalism and democracy,
well-made socks and the NC double A,
caught in the job creators pepper spray,
praising Aaron Rodgers and Scott Walker,
Stieg Larsson and Julian Assange,
ragtime tornadoes, fracking earthquakes, nuclear tsumanis
a self-immolation before a courthouse in New Hampshire,
the epic fail of sovereigns, the credit event bazookas,
the black swan contagions of a civilization
that can no longer stomach the gentlest of truths.
This was the year we glimpsed the mirror behind the curtain
but only to see if our eyes were open,
for the real work ahead, for all of us now
is go stark raving sane to discover the treasure
of what we have been all this time,
beyond El Greco's tarnished saints
or Caravaggio's lucent sinners,
the thing we are always urging us towards,
forever mistaken but never wrong,
the lurch through the cleansing hurricane
to the nothing inside, all eyes.
an Oscar Wilde saint with a past,
the lines, by El Greco, all black.
It's time, to leave behind
some hostages of the mind:
bowling in Manhattan, swimming in the Yucatan,
visiting psych wards and tooth removers,
humid graduations and ice-cold reunions,
afternoon mescal in the West, St. Germaine back East,
the cheers for the Bruins and for De Vere on the silver screen,
the elegies for capitalism and democracy,
well-made socks and the NC double A,
caught in the job creators pepper spray,
praising Aaron Rodgers and Scott Walker,
Stieg Larsson and Julian Assange,
ragtime tornadoes, fracking earthquakes, nuclear tsumanis
a self-immolation before a courthouse in New Hampshire,
the epic fail of sovereigns, the credit event bazookas,
the black swan contagions of a civilization
that can no longer stomach the gentlest of truths.
This was the year we glimpsed the mirror behind the curtain
but only to see if our eyes were open,
for the real work ahead, for all of us now
is go stark raving sane to discover the treasure
of what we have been all this time,
beyond El Greco's tarnished saints
or Caravaggio's lucent sinners,
the thing we are always urging us towards,
forever mistaken but never wrong,
the lurch through the cleansing hurricane
to the nothing inside, all eyes.
Thursday, December 29, 2011
The Continuing Adventures of
Mr. Bull and Mr. Bear
For one, the sun is always rising.
For the other, the sky is always falling.
Yet they both are always right,
All curvings of the roller coaster ride reveal their foresight.
One is fearless in how much they love us
(Even when they try to kill us),
Sees children as the mother of invention.
The other's always dying to the dream of sleep,
Seeking freedom from the stubborn pull of nothingness.
There's no walk through the fire without being burned
There's only the fire
And not being burned.
Yet one can learn by swaying with the balance
As markets adjust behind secretive weights,
Seek solace in the one and then in the other
Though what is put together one can't calculate.
One must let the rope out in infinite faith
And pull it back in with all of one's strength.
The gift of life is far too prevalent
It must be trimmed back, for growth is
A means to an end.
But what that end is, we still can't predict
Even with minds that encompass all,
Even with all-embracing hearts,
For we wheel in the same old orbit around
The contradictions that are the possibilities
Pretending that it matters to be right or be wrong
When our openness alone propels the journey.
For the other, the sky is always falling.
Yet they both are always right,
All curvings of the roller coaster ride reveal their foresight.
One is fearless in how much they love us
(Even when they try to kill us),
Sees children as the mother of invention.
The other's always dying to the dream of sleep,
Seeking freedom from the stubborn pull of nothingness.
There's no walk through the fire without being burned
There's only the fire
And not being burned.
Yet one can learn by swaying with the balance
As markets adjust behind secretive weights,
Seek solace in the one and then in the other
Though what is put together one can't calculate.
One must let the rope out in infinite faith
And pull it back in with all of one's strength.
The gift of life is far too prevalent
It must be trimmed back, for growth is
A means to an end.
But what that end is, we still can't predict
Even with minds that encompass all,
Even with all-embracing hearts,
For we wheel in the same old orbit around
The contradictions that are the possibilities
Pretending that it matters to be right or be wrong
When our openness alone propels the journey.
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Heroes in a Box
The little people
See the big wide world
In deep and shiny focus;
Every sentient thing
Wears its praise and blame.
The giant people
Have insect-like eyes
Compelled to read patterns
Only they can see;
A thread becomes a world.
The roses the little ones
Throw at their feet
Are shadows of darkness and light,
But the eyes returned in confusion
Bear bright the purest of wisdom.
It's as if they are watching a birth out of nothing,
Some color to light the familiar world,
But the giants vanish when eyes adapt to their light.
The little people fear they're too small
Swallowed in how large they've become.
See the big wide world
In deep and shiny focus;
Every sentient thing
Wears its praise and blame.
The giant people
Have insect-like eyes
Compelled to read patterns
Only they can see;
A thread becomes a world.
The roses the little ones
Throw at their feet
Are shadows of darkness and light,
But the eyes returned in confusion
Bear bright the purest of wisdom.
It's as if they are watching a birth out of nothing,
Some color to light the familiar world,
But the giants vanish when eyes adapt to their light.
The little people fear they're too small
Swallowed in how large they've become.
Monday, December 26, 2011
Cold Walk in the Middle of the Night
There are few Christmas lights
in the Marblehead Neck mansions,
but in the squid ink sea
green and red lights flash incessantly
from solitary rocks
amid swaying buoys.
in the Marblehead Neck mansions,
but in the squid ink sea
green and red lights flash incessantly
from solitary rocks
amid swaying buoys.
Saturday, December 24, 2011
Conjunction
Capricorn Connecticut, in a Capricorn sun and new moon...
It's brutal the way
the goat grows out of the spiral,
irascible ego
must learn how to flow
with the consequating whole,
to let the past go
by learning its mistakes.
The integrity of fitting
the narrow straits
requires not molding the truth
to desire
for even an instant,
but accepting the brown hills
of bare woods as beauty
so the path of the birch trees
can be seen.
It's an energy that tells me
with my precious son in a homeless shelter
on Christmas
not to break
or visit.
It's brutal the way
the goat grows out of the spiral,
irascible ego
must learn how to flow
with the consequating whole,
to let the past go
by learning its mistakes.
The integrity of fitting
the narrow straits
requires not molding the truth
to desire
for even an instant,
but accepting the brown hills
of bare woods as beauty
so the path of the birch trees
can be seen.
It's an energy that tells me
with my precious son in a homeless shelter
on Christmas
not to break
or visit.
Friday, December 23, 2011
St. Nicholas the Banker
In honor of U.S. total debt reaching 100% of GDP (officially at least) on the winter solstice.
Hard times for he who thinks of himself as God
And every year pretends he’s not a fraud,
The middleman from a land of endless fleece,
His conspiracy unraveled piece by piece.
He’d told the slaves he’d teach them all a trade
As if it was OK they were not paid.
He called it all a global charity
For the oil-rich, offshore, tax-free territory.
When he asked them to don green felt hats and bells
To endure the sting of sawdust and the turpentine smells
It taught them every year that they were fools;
Their student loans were never paid in full
So they worked to smelt lead, sew shoes, trim elastic
And fill their lungs with fiberglass and plastic
With no health care or dental, for some children overseas
Whose parents paid five times their homes to please.
How money good turned bad he wouldn’t say,
Maybe when he discontinued real gold in his sleigh
Or maybe he created a dependency,
A sense of entitlement to drive his Ponzi scheme,
All we know for sure now is the gold is gone
And shoddy toys each year are left too soon in front of lawns
Yet each of us must fill the stocking yet again for Santa
A starting out down payment of two hundred fifty grand, a
Pittance when compared to what we really owe
To this mysterious Kringle who makes gold out of tinsel
And has nothing left to show for all his usury
Except our souls bound in perpetuity.
For this one Christmas we will owe a thousand
To fortify his compound in the northern wasteland
And so we can believe that he is real,
His bubbles all still made as out of steel.
We’ve given him the mint whose coins are cold, thin air
Leant back to us for payment at three times the share
Yet somehow we believe he can’t exist,
That coincidence could not allow such a perverse plot twist;
It’s so much easier to believe he’s a delusion
Than to know exactly what he does to children.
We lack respect, he says now; this greatest of all men
Has to hide his gifts of course in gilded wrapping.
He offered once a hope to a world torn up by war
That if we were more good each year we would gain a reward,
But these things he leant to us became what we were,
His boxes were empty of what really mattered
And chaos has ensued, the mother of all profit
That spins and spins until there is nothing left of it
And hard times have come now for even Santa Clause,
A time that should give every one of us pause,
A time to look the gift horse in the mouth,
A time for polar north to vibrate south
To rediscover our love inside the light
And bless the final passing of the long, good night.
Hard times for he who thinks of himself as God
And every year pretends he’s not a fraud,
The middleman from a land of endless fleece,
His conspiracy unraveled piece by piece.
He’d told the slaves he’d teach them all a trade
As if it was OK they were not paid.
He called it all a global charity
For the oil-rich, offshore, tax-free territory.
When he asked them to don green felt hats and bells
To endure the sting of sawdust and the turpentine smells
It taught them every year that they were fools;
Their student loans were never paid in full
So they worked to smelt lead, sew shoes, trim elastic
And fill their lungs with fiberglass and plastic
With no health care or dental, for some children overseas
Whose parents paid five times their homes to please.
How money good turned bad he wouldn’t say,
Maybe when he discontinued real gold in his sleigh
Or maybe he created a dependency,
A sense of entitlement to drive his Ponzi scheme,
All we know for sure now is the gold is gone
And shoddy toys each year are left too soon in front of lawns
Yet each of us must fill the stocking yet again for Santa
A starting out down payment of two hundred fifty grand, a
Pittance when compared to what we really owe
To this mysterious Kringle who makes gold out of tinsel
And has nothing left to show for all his usury
Except our souls bound in perpetuity.
For this one Christmas we will owe a thousand
To fortify his compound in the northern wasteland
And so we can believe that he is real,
His bubbles all still made as out of steel.
We’ve given him the mint whose coins are cold, thin air
Leant back to us for payment at three times the share
Yet somehow we believe he can’t exist,
That coincidence could not allow such a perverse plot twist;
It’s so much easier to believe he’s a delusion
Than to know exactly what he does to children.
We lack respect, he says now; this greatest of all men
Has to hide his gifts of course in gilded wrapping.
He offered once a hope to a world torn up by war
That if we were more good each year we would gain a reward,
But these things he leant to us became what we were,
His boxes were empty of what really mattered
And chaos has ensued, the mother of all profit
That spins and spins until there is nothing left of it
And hard times have come now for even Santa Clause,
A time that should give every one of us pause,
A time to look the gift horse in the mouth,
A time for polar north to vibrate south
To rediscover our love inside the light
And bless the final passing of the long, good night.
Friday, December 16, 2011
After "The Long Christmas Dinner"
A miniskirt with sequins, December horn of Orpheus
but no one is adored...
"Titanic's sister ship!," turquoise dress with rabbit fur
but no one is adored...
It's overdrafts, lost credit cards, and pre-processing fees
that warm the people's voices,
the jingling lust of Christmas
that puts the giggle in their stride
but no one is adored...
No birds of prey look longingly
just iron wings with ruby eyes.
Panhandlers cannot even see our souls.
Couples smile arm in arm
so glad to be away from each other just this once
but no one is adored...
Some fair exchange is bartered out
in all the brisk complaining,
some wisdom comes from blackenings of vodka
but no one is adored...
The only one invisible
who floats between the rising plumes of steam,
completely empty of the storefronts in his eyes,
looks up into the fat and glistening sky:
Adoration calm and endless fuels the night.
but no one is adored...
"Titanic's sister ship!," turquoise dress with rabbit fur
but no one is adored...
It's overdrafts, lost credit cards, and pre-processing fees
that warm the people's voices,
the jingling lust of Christmas
that puts the giggle in their stride
but no one is adored...
No birds of prey look longingly
just iron wings with ruby eyes.
Panhandlers cannot even see our souls.
Couples smile arm in arm
so glad to be away from each other just this once
but no one is adored...
Some fair exchange is bartered out
in all the brisk complaining,
some wisdom comes from blackenings of vodka
but no one is adored...
The only one invisible
who floats between the rising plumes of steam,
completely empty of the storefronts in his eyes,
looks up into the fat and glistening sky:
Adoration calm and endless fuels the night.
Words of Wisdom from Bill Hicks
"The world is like a ride at an amusement park, and when you choose to go on it, you think it's real because that's how powerful our minds are. The ride goes up and down, round and round, it has thrills and chills, it's very brightly colored, it's very loud and it's fun for a while. Some people have been on this ride for a long time and they think to question 'is this real, or is it just a ride?,' and other people have remembered and they come back to us and they say 'hey don't worry, don't be afraid ever because this is just a ride,' and we, we kill these people. We kill all the good guys who try to tell us this and let the demons run amok, but that's OK, it's just a ride." - Bill Hicks (December 16, 1961 – February 26, 1994)
Explaining the Zodiac to a Child
In the circle, like a merry-go-round, you see the same familiar faces
As you go around. Sometimes they smile,
Sometimes they frown, and by the end they’ve disappeared
Although you’re right where you began.
The red horse I am riding needs green dragon by its side,
I need to have the bad guy, to drive these pistons on,
I need to have this mirror in the center, or else I'd turn
To stone, or else I’d be afraid I was invisible,
Unable to see the wound that takes me home.
The shadows rise and fall upon the pole
Still I’m in the same place moving,
The plastic saddle, the permanent smile
Aren’t real, but my stirrups are
As I stroke the purple hair that keeps me dreaming.
And as I pass another turn around the cylinder
That hammers music, another cluster
Of notes like a hand with cubes of sugar
Makes me recognize at last
That every time I pass
It is unique, this stiff contraption
Lets me be the world revolving, for the oneness has the room
For endless ones to spin an endless candy cotton.
As you go around. Sometimes they smile,
Sometimes they frown, and by the end they’ve disappeared
Although you’re right where you began.
The red horse I am riding needs green dragon by its side,
I need to have the bad guy, to drive these pistons on,
I need to have this mirror in the center, or else I'd turn
To stone, or else I’d be afraid I was invisible,
Unable to see the wound that takes me home.
The shadows rise and fall upon the pole
Still I’m in the same place moving,
The plastic saddle, the permanent smile
Aren’t real, but my stirrups are
As I stroke the purple hair that keeps me dreaming.
And as I pass another turn around the cylinder
That hammers music, another cluster
Of notes like a hand with cubes of sugar
Makes me recognize at last
That every time I pass
It is unique, this stiff contraption
Lets me be the world revolving, for the oneness has the room
For endless ones to spin an endless candy cotton.
Thursday, December 15, 2011
The Morning After the Bill of Rights Was Expunged
Geese flying west, honking into the great mystery
But touching somehow, in formation, as if attacking
When they could be picked off so easily.
A sparrow as Cassandra with its discontented plaints
Lives in a harmony of song in the air.
We round them up, and rip down their nests
But still they return, endless
With their incomprehensible squawking
And we too dumb to hear.
Five days of what we do to you,
What we now can do to any U.S. citizen
Who expresses a different opinion,
Makes you a lifelong vegetable.
I wish we could treat humans
As gently as birds.
Happy 220th birthday, and Rest In Peace
But touching somehow, in formation, as if attacking
When they could be picked off so easily.
A sparrow as Cassandra with its discontented plaints
Lives in a harmony of song in the air.
We round them up, and rip down their nests
But still they return, endless
With their incomprehensible squawking
And we too dumb to hear.
Five days of what we do to you,
What we now can do to any U.S. citizen
Who expresses a different opinion,
Makes you a lifelong vegetable.
I wish we could treat humans
As gently as birds.
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Chiron Return
Your parents had a hole
That made them abandon you.
It shines back now
With all of your glory.
What a gift
You once labeled pain.
Your only medal is a scar
As ugly and set apart as you are.
It's made you immortal,
The wound that never heals.
That made them abandon you.
It shines back now
With all of your glory.
What a gift
You once labeled pain.
Your only medal is a scar
As ugly and set apart as you are.
It's made you immortal,
The wound that never heals.
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
The Second Coming
An alternative version of Yeats’ new-age poem
The hierophant has supper with the fool,
This spade will raise my body up, he chimes,
This chalice holds my blood, that is the rule,
But the fool sees only bread and wine;
A hand turns on the Christ light one more time.
The priestess takes her crystals from her veil,
The magician turns her secrets into fuel
As if it bears on what we do, his grail,
Its vast illusion truth beyond their rule;
A hand turns on the Christ light like a jewel.
The emperor of wands and empress of swords
Fall from the tower under stars and moon
While the hanged man prize lies upside down from cords,
The devil rapt in judgment on the wheel of fortune;
A chariot turns the Christ light on the runes.
These ancient archetypes were made for us
So we could grieve for what we were with wars
And know love as an arc of endless service
With music and mathematics as our lords;
The hand that lit the Christ light brought the words.
And now we see the priests steal children’s souls,
The devil wins whatever king we choose,
The world of form has fallen through the holes,
The truths we sought an analgesic ruse,
The Christ light’s now inside us like a fuse.
The hierophant has supper with the fool,
This spade will raise my body up, he chimes,
This chalice holds my blood, that is the rule,
But the fool sees only bread and wine;
A hand turns on the Christ light one more time.
The priestess takes her crystals from her veil,
The magician turns her secrets into fuel
As if it bears on what we do, his grail,
Its vast illusion truth beyond their rule;
A hand turns on the Christ light like a jewel.
The emperor of wands and empress of swords
Fall from the tower under stars and moon
While the hanged man prize lies upside down from cords,
The devil rapt in judgment on the wheel of fortune;
A chariot turns the Christ light on the runes.
These ancient archetypes were made for us
So we could grieve for what we were with wars
And know love as an arc of endless service
With music and mathematics as our lords;
The hand that lit the Christ light brought the words.
And now we see the priests steal children’s souls,
The devil wins whatever king we choose,
The world of form has fallen through the holes,
The truths we sought an analgesic ruse,
The Christ light’s now inside us like a fuse.
Monday, December 12, 2011
Responsibility
"The IMF is the US and so ultimately, these new 'loans' to insolvent sovereigns, are being guaranteed by the US tax payer. We also know that if involved in the financings, the US IMF banks (JP Morgan and others) get preferred status in any sovereign bankruptcy. In light of what transpired during the MF Global bankruptcy, the 'preferred' status given to JP Morgan by the trustee has meant, that segregated client funds that were supposed to stay segregated, by law, have been taken by JP Morgan, an unsecured creditor. That doesn't bode very well for the US tax payers in the case of any future sovereign bankruptcies where investment banks like JP Morgan will have preferred status off the bat. In this situation, the US tax payers will have less 'protection' than the MF Global customers.
"Plus, if the IMF gets involved, countries would lose all of their sovereignty. The IMF would essentially run the country's finances and control all state assets, which basically results in the asset stripping of the said economies in order to continue to repay the new IMF loans that were necessary because the countries' GDP could not sustain the payments of the central banks's loans. Historically, borrowing from the IMF has always been devastating for countries, as after paying the IMF, there is no capital left for growth, all state assets fall into private, usually foreign hands and most wealth extracted from those assets is exported outside of the countries. It's a great deal for the IMF banks, as this means, the taking of real assets, like Italy's gold reserves for example, in exchange for paper, which in light of all the debt, QE and other inflationary policies, has questionable future value.
"Of course this is what will happen, as I am convinced that these people will not stop privatizing profits and socialising losses until they are forced to do so. They will squeeze every last drop from the tax payers of the world until everyone is paving their own roads, picking up their own mail and paying taxes on breathing. They will keep going until they cannot continue.”
-“Swani,” in a comment on Euro Zone: Another Crisis, Another Backdoor Taxpayer Bailout in today’s Zero Hedge.
They paid it forward
Goya and Moliere,
Brecht and Goethe,
Caravaggio and Voltaire,
And if we really care
About their findings,
If they’re aren’t just
Alchemy,
We won't begrudge the copper
Soul-extracted usury.
For they need inspiration too,
The boot of evil rules
To prophesy another way
And distinguish whose from whose.
This bounteous land is there for us
To starve and kill and lose
What other purpose could it serve?
For life is ever complete,
We chomp like horses at a bit
To charge our aching feet.
"Plus, if the IMF gets involved, countries would lose all of their sovereignty. The IMF would essentially run the country's finances and control all state assets, which basically results in the asset stripping of the said economies in order to continue to repay the new IMF loans that were necessary because the countries' GDP could not sustain the payments of the central banks's loans. Historically, borrowing from the IMF has always been devastating for countries, as after paying the IMF, there is no capital left for growth, all state assets fall into private, usually foreign hands and most wealth extracted from those assets is exported outside of the countries. It's a great deal for the IMF banks, as this means, the taking of real assets, like Italy's gold reserves for example, in exchange for paper, which in light of all the debt, QE and other inflationary policies, has questionable future value.
"Of course this is what will happen, as I am convinced that these people will not stop privatizing profits and socialising losses until they are forced to do so. They will squeeze every last drop from the tax payers of the world until everyone is paving their own roads, picking up their own mail and paying taxes on breathing. They will keep going until they cannot continue.”
-“Swani,” in a comment on Euro Zone: Another Crisis, Another Backdoor Taxpayer Bailout in today’s Zero Hedge.
They paid it forward
Goya and Moliere,
Brecht and Goethe,
Caravaggio and Voltaire,
And if we really care
About their findings,
If they’re aren’t just
Alchemy,
We won't begrudge the copper
Soul-extracted usury.
For they need inspiration too,
The boot of evil rules
To prophesy another way
And distinguish whose from whose.
This bounteous land is there for us
To starve and kill and lose
What other purpose could it serve?
For life is ever complete,
We chomp like horses at a bit
To charge our aching feet.
Friday, December 9, 2011
My Poems
The gathering of poets
share their deepest secrets.
In the library next door
all the books of men are kept.
I had to leave,
through the trapdoor of the evening
to the Burger King,
where all the poems I'll ever need are found.
share their deepest secrets.
In the library next door
all the books of men are kept.
I had to leave,
through the trapdoor of the evening
to the Burger King,
where all the poems I'll ever need are found.
Post-Face
For Jerome Rothenberg on his 80th Birthday
And why can’t I live
With the cavemen and vagabonds
Sharing wordless screams that they call poems?
Why can’t I look
To the dead and to the darkness
For the words they need to speak to me today?
If you’re patient enough
A poem eventually comes from the iguana’s mouth.
Are we ever large enough
For even the smallest of poems?
You wouldn’t know, weaving all
Into The book, the long-dreamt endless book,
The prayer that never ends, the voice that
Never strays from its beginnings –
One tribe when every person is a wolf
—Who dreams that? That night could unify like that?
Who shows that day can be dismantled
By pulling plugs out of its sockets?
So easy, do you do this,
As if—the way you look at us—we did it all.
And why can’t I live
With the cavemen and vagabonds
Sharing wordless screams that they call poems?
Why can’t I look
To the dead and to the darkness
For the words they need to speak to me today?
If you’re patient enough
A poem eventually comes from the iguana’s mouth.
Are we ever large enough
For even the smallest of poems?
You wouldn’t know, weaving all
Into The book, the long-dreamt endless book,
The prayer that never ends, the voice that
Never strays from its beginnings –
One tribe when every person is a wolf
—Who dreams that? That night could unify like that?
Who shows that day can be dismantled
By pulling plugs out of its sockets?
So easy, do you do this,
As if—the way you look at us—we did it all.
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Beauty's Dualities
Thanks, MattRusty, for hepping me to Tolstoy’s “What is Art?” as if the 20th century never existed. Here are some ruminations on the subject.
Beauty frees us from our separation, yet isolates us from everyone else.
Beauty’s like a laugh that infects others to laughter, yet no one gets the joke.
Beauty’s nothing but rhythm, logic and form, yet it brings out the deepest, darkest feelings.
Beauty consists of sharp combinations, yet it only exists as a whole.
Beauty is truth and truth beauty, yet beauty's an illusion and truth is ugly.
Beauty is impractical, yet the only thing humanity cares about.
We all by instinct know and savor beauty, yet no one can agree on what is beautiful.
Beauty takes away the sadness from love, and gives compassion to fear.
Beauty magnifies the finite, and sets boundaries to the infinite.
Beauty shows us what we look like using things that aren’t us.
Beauty shows us new ways to think by repeating what we already know.
Beauty is everywhere, in all that humans are and do, yet it is rare in works of art.
Beauty can't be put into words, yet it doesn’t exist without them.
Beauty frees us from our separation, yet isolates us from everyone else.
Beauty’s like a laugh that infects others to laughter, yet no one gets the joke.
Beauty’s nothing but rhythm, logic and form, yet it brings out the deepest, darkest feelings.
Beauty consists of sharp combinations, yet it only exists as a whole.
Beauty is truth and truth beauty, yet beauty's an illusion and truth is ugly.
Beauty is impractical, yet the only thing humanity cares about.
We all by instinct know and savor beauty, yet no one can agree on what is beautiful.
Beauty takes away the sadness from love, and gives compassion to fear.
Beauty magnifies the finite, and sets boundaries to the infinite.
Beauty shows us what we look like using things that aren’t us.
Beauty shows us new ways to think by repeating what we already know.
Beauty is everywhere, in all that humans are and do, yet it is rare in works of art.
Beauty can't be put into words, yet it doesn’t exist without them.
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Mirror Image
The squirrel glazed with sap
buries another seed at the depot
deep enough to be hidden
but shallow enough to be found,
the common becomes secret.
A row of his own trees
should have lost their leaves by now
but there's only this veined parking lot.
For as long as he is here
he is free to dream.
buries another seed at the depot
deep enough to be hidden
but shallow enough to be found,
the common becomes secret.
A row of his own trees
should have lost their leaves by now
but there's only this veined parking lot.
For as long as he is here
he is free to dream.
Monday, December 5, 2011
After Seeing the "Ancient Aliens" TV Show for the First Time
The world has acquired all my knowledge
just as I start forgetting the facts.
One can claim for the manifest there was no transaction
but this crow knows better,
downloading what's in my brow
with the report of its voice.
just as I start forgetting the facts.
One can claim for the manifest there was no transaction
but this crow knows better,
downloading what's in my brow
with the report of its voice.
Friday, December 2, 2011
Entrance of Frost
A second sun within the glass;
patterns of the nebulae and spider wool;
jewel laminate that shines like stars and capillary streams;
the earth thickened from its dream,
its breath made tangible.
Colors are borrowed away
so the sun can give birth to them again
as it can wipe away the years
from temporarily elderly roofs.
The shallows are solid,
the smoke's stuck to the sky
and desolate fairways glisten grey;
some story begins on a morning like this
though the robins sing elegies to our numb and pulsing ears.
A winter coat of obscurity
lifts the world to solidity,
as something finally real
—with all the pain and ecstasy that that entails—
but the real is just a station,
we continue on our journey
deeper into truth,
forward into fantasy.
patterns of the nebulae and spider wool;
jewel laminate that shines like stars and capillary streams;
the earth thickened from its dream,
its breath made tangible.
Colors are borrowed away
so the sun can give birth to them again
as it can wipe away the years
from temporarily elderly roofs.
The shallows are solid,
the smoke's stuck to the sky
and desolate fairways glisten grey;
some story begins on a morning like this
though the robins sing elegies to our numb and pulsing ears.
A winter coat of obscurity
lifts the world to solidity,
as something finally real
—with all the pain and ecstasy that that entails—
but the real is just a station,
we continue on our journey
deeper into truth,
forward into fantasy.
Thursday, December 1, 2011
Sudden Sparkle
Cold December
and the smell of reddened chocolate,
The browns and the golds are
vying with the greens,
The limbs, unencumbered now with leaves
are lined with lights,
And bells, once stuffed inside
the choruses of morning
Now ring, each one, as I walk by,
to show how something is alive that I can't see.
The birds have lost their camouflage
but still they go on singing.
The sky is now too wide to keep the secret
that everything is white
And shining like a moon
in the blue, transparent morning.
and the smell of reddened chocolate,
The browns and the golds are
vying with the greens,
The limbs, unencumbered now with leaves
are lined with lights,
And bells, once stuffed inside
the choruses of morning
Now ring, each one, as I walk by,
to show how something is alive that I can't see.
The birds have lost their camouflage
but still they go on singing.
The sky is now too wide to keep the secret
that everything is white
And shining like a moon
in the blue, transparent morning.
Saturday, November 26, 2011
A Cul-de-Sac in Queens
They've very kindly set New York up
like a giant game of chess:
a puzzle here, equation there,
some candy for the mind
that finds its glee in navigating conundrums.
But there are others, for whom
the rules have no real logic,
directions lead in circles,
the languages are of ancient lands.
like a giant game of chess:
a puzzle here, equation there,
some candy for the mind
that finds its glee in navigating conundrums.
But there are others, for whom
the rules have no real logic,
directions lead in circles,
the languages are of ancient lands.
Friday, November 25, 2011
Why Marketing Executives Should Not Create Children’s Breakfast Cereals
Help Wanted: Cereal chemist who can translate marketing directives into cost-efficient executions for the following series of four seasonal-based sweetened breakfast cereals:
Leef Krunch
Formula: Maple sweetened flakes in the shape of leaves, with cinnamon-flavored twigs mixed in with the leaves. Must be able to claim “Real Maple Inside.”
Mascot: Horatio the Crow, who wears a dream catcher around his neck
Marketing Objective: To replace the concept of fall with “it’s leef krunch time.”
Frost Bitez
Formula: Sweetened coconut macaroon-like puffs with red raspberry filling inside.
Mascot: a Yeti named Balthazar who looks like the Abominable Snowman on Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.
Marketing Objective: In addition to its seasonal and holiday usage, to aspire to the coolness of Frost Bitez in the heat of summer.
Paper Faireez
Formula: Paper-thin, almost translucent wafers in the shape of fairies that when exposed to milk expand like a sponge and turn five different shades of vivid pastel floral colors/flavors: daffodil/lemon, pink tulip/cherry, white clover/honey, honeysuckle/generic berry, violets/violets.
Mascot: Five distinct cartoon paper fairies that bring inanimate/dead things to life by sprinkling spring dust on them; each fairy has the name and color of a flower: Daffodil, Tulip, Clover, Honeysuckle and Violet. Further differentiation in characters is anticipated in development with the agency.
Marketing Objective: To transition toddlers to sweetened hallucinogenic breakfast cereals instead of farina, and to provide an appropriate breakfast-cereal addition to Easter-themed confectionery products.
Beech Treets
Formula: “Sand”-like sugar/hazelnut/wheat granules with the consistency of cream-of-wheat (may consult with independent lab technicians to achieve proper consistency), interspersed with chocolate “tokens” like Monopoly board pieces in the shapes of beach objects like balls, soft-serve ice cream cones, umbrellas, life preservers and rafts -- must achieve a coconut suntan lotion fragrance. This cereal will be packaged in a super-size box.
Mascot: None, instead a toy pail holding a prize of a larger, plastic version of a beach token will be in every box (shovel will not be included due to choking concerns). The advertising campaign will feature an ongoing debate between kids who want to eat the cereal whole, and those who want to take out the chocolate tokens first and put them in the pail for later. There will be seven colors of pails, with directions to collect all seven. In every 100th box, there will be a rainbow pail, but there will be no public announcement or acknowledgement of this, the expectation being that kids will think it’s a mistake and start coveting them.
Marketing Objective: To test the outer limit of how much sugar can be put into a children’s breakfast cereal; this product is expected to have high initial sales during its seasonal introduction, but it is anticipated that parental and regulatory pressure may result in its discontinuation. In its place, a sticky tropical fruit themed version will be introduced, with the sand coating the fruit in clusters.
Leef Krunch
Formula: Maple sweetened flakes in the shape of leaves, with cinnamon-flavored twigs mixed in with the leaves. Must be able to claim “Real Maple Inside.”
Mascot: Horatio the Crow, who wears a dream catcher around his neck
Marketing Objective: To replace the concept of fall with “it’s leef krunch time.”
Frost Bitez
Formula: Sweetened coconut macaroon-like puffs with red raspberry filling inside.
Mascot: a Yeti named Balthazar who looks like the Abominable Snowman on Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.
Marketing Objective: In addition to its seasonal and holiday usage, to aspire to the coolness of Frost Bitez in the heat of summer.
Paper Faireez
Formula: Paper-thin, almost translucent wafers in the shape of fairies that when exposed to milk expand like a sponge and turn five different shades of vivid pastel floral colors/flavors: daffodil/lemon, pink tulip/cherry, white clover/honey, honeysuckle/generic berry, violets/violets.
Mascot: Five distinct cartoon paper fairies that bring inanimate/dead things to life by sprinkling spring dust on them; each fairy has the name and color of a flower: Daffodil, Tulip, Clover, Honeysuckle and Violet. Further differentiation in characters is anticipated in development with the agency.
Marketing Objective: To transition toddlers to sweetened hallucinogenic breakfast cereals instead of farina, and to provide an appropriate breakfast-cereal addition to Easter-themed confectionery products.
Beech Treets
Formula: “Sand”-like sugar/hazelnut/wheat granules with the consistency of cream-of-wheat (may consult with independent lab technicians to achieve proper consistency), interspersed with chocolate “tokens” like Monopoly board pieces in the shapes of beach objects like balls, soft-serve ice cream cones, umbrellas, life preservers and rafts -- must achieve a coconut suntan lotion fragrance. This cereal will be packaged in a super-size box.
Mascot: None, instead a toy pail holding a prize of a larger, plastic version of a beach token will be in every box (shovel will not be included due to choking concerns). The advertising campaign will feature an ongoing debate between kids who want to eat the cereal whole, and those who want to take out the chocolate tokens first and put them in the pail for later. There will be seven colors of pails, with directions to collect all seven. In every 100th box, there will be a rainbow pail, but there will be no public announcement or acknowledgement of this, the expectation being that kids will think it’s a mistake and start coveting them.
Marketing Objective: To test the outer limit of how much sugar can be put into a children’s breakfast cereal; this product is expected to have high initial sales during its seasonal introduction, but it is anticipated that parental and regulatory pressure may result in its discontinuation. In its place, a sticky tropical fruit themed version will be introduced, with the sand coating the fruit in clusters.
The Humanists
Players Club, Gramercy Park, NYC, 11/24/11
To Jim and Brenda
Emma Ferguson stares from out her cabinet card;
David Garrick greets us at our table
To clarify that it was he who was the first to say
Comedy’s more difficult than dying;
Edwin Booth’s our gracious host
As long as we acknowledge
His Hamlet as the greatest in the sea.
All the Janus-mask personages
Are done up here in oils
More lucent than their most glorious personas
But still they cannot leave the stage…
They have to hear the applause of the forks and knives,
The drinking-game claims of whether Shakespeare
Is only realized in Russian
As Chekhov only speaks in the English tongue.
They take this kind of parlor talk so seriously
As if that’s all that matters of the losses in the world.
I know they want to kidnap me
When I hear of Mark Twain’s pool cue
Just waiting for me to see down in the basement.
Above this Indian burial ground, the owners of the world
Spin the finest dust in endless circles,
While on the boulevard are brand-new couples
Who hold new family’s love in tin-foiled pans, and ask
So lightly and so gay
The most important questions.
I see the shadow now of how tall my tales have become,
That they could be so stirring, though nothing ever moved.
I’m chasing something
Like a dog without thinking would chase a squirrel.
To Jim and Brenda
Emma Ferguson stares from out her cabinet card;
David Garrick greets us at our table
To clarify that it was he who was the first to say
Comedy’s more difficult than dying;
Edwin Booth’s our gracious host
As long as we acknowledge
His Hamlet as the greatest in the sea.
All the Janus-mask personages
Are done up here in oils
More lucent than their most glorious personas
But still they cannot leave the stage…
They have to hear the applause of the forks and knives,
The drinking-game claims of whether Shakespeare
Is only realized in Russian
As Chekhov only speaks in the English tongue.
They take this kind of parlor talk so seriously
As if that’s all that matters of the losses in the world.
I know they want to kidnap me
When I hear of Mark Twain’s pool cue
Just waiting for me to see down in the basement.
Above this Indian burial ground, the owners of the world
Spin the finest dust in endless circles,
While on the boulevard are brand-new couples
Who hold new family’s love in tin-foiled pans, and ask
So lightly and so gay
The most important questions.
I see the shadow now of how tall my tales have become,
That they could be so stirring, though nothing ever moved.
I’m chasing something
Like a dog without thinking would chase a squirrel.
Thursday, November 24, 2011
Why Academics Should Not Watch Movies
Scholars in the field have begun to comment on the strange anomaly of why every straight guy in the world thinks he’s the only straight guy in the world who wants to have sex with Katherine Heigl. It is no longer enough to simply respond that Heigl is the antipode of Renee Zellwiger, who apparently has it written into her contract that someone in any movie she’s in must comment on how beautiful she is. Heigl is not simply the beautiful girl unaware of her own beauty, or the pal that no one looks at as beautiful, or other common dramatic disguises designed to project otherworldly beauty into ordinary situations (or vice versa). For Heigl, the analysis must go deeper, into the very fiber of her acting gestalt, for her work to date has veered from the normal puppet/butterfly archetypes of MKULTRA into a deeper level of manipulation that deserves further study, for it may be an indication of future sex idol transmission techniques in an increasingly fragmented media landscape.
Any analysis must begin with her Germanic name. There’s nothing funny about a German joke, as the old saw goes, and her customary bemused opening posture, mouth open as if to say something funny, creates a dissonance when one simultaneously encounters her odd combination of jet black eyes and Nordic blonde hair. Consider the effect if her eyes were green; wouldn’t you just laugh at what she says, having forgotten it immediately? Instead you’re pulled into further confusion, the disturbing mix of her man height, man walk, man hands, man shoulders, and man forehead with her very female take on such irritating qualities as hauteur, mockery, ridicule, impatience, insolence, condescension, fury, indignation, madness, bubble-brainedness and shit-losing, in effortlessly modulating subtle shadings of high bitchiness. This all centers of course on her neck, which you want to strangle, especially when it physically protrudes on the sides, and her adam’s apple wobbles, as she performs one of the above-mentioned irritating qualities. You do not want to strangle Scarlett Johannson or Zoey Deschanel. Add to that the fangs (she’d be great in a Van Helsing squealquel), the eyebrows that can wilt a carrot, and that awkward hairwhip move that only a gangly teenager who’s been mercilessly teased for years can pull off, and it’s almost, almost possible to not realize that she’s got a totally bitching bod. Completing the effect is the most effective eyelid acting of this generation. When James Lipton had her on the Actor’s Studio his first question of course was about the eyelid acting, how he uses her work to train his students but they never get it, what’s her secret, to which she replied, in that unctuous yet silly manner, “I dunno, I guess it just comes nat-rullly”. And that’s the point, isn’t it, the complete innocence of it all, the centuries of forgetting required, you just want to ask her what’s the deal, even though you know this will only result in those lips, those lips moving, squishing around some statement so contrary, so implausible, all you want to do is stick your tongue inside her mouth, even though you know she will suck up your whole psyche and mash it down like another chain-smoked cigarette.
It’s in the bone structure, that pure Aristotelian form more like a philosophy than something physical. Every face you see you’ve seen before, but bone structure, that’s unique, and you have to contend with its uniqueness. And hers is almost perfect, like F. Scott Fitzgerald said Katherine Hepburn’s was, and it frames her shaming smile, lights up her vacant eyes, brings depth to her relentlessly unforgiving brow. She gives you nothing, no hope of any leverage over any aspect of her, no control of anything now in your possession. You are only thankful you are tormented from afar, that you don’t have to hear the laugh if you were to ask her out on a date.
Any analysis must begin with her Germanic name. There’s nothing funny about a German joke, as the old saw goes, and her customary bemused opening posture, mouth open as if to say something funny, creates a dissonance when one simultaneously encounters her odd combination of jet black eyes and Nordic blonde hair. Consider the effect if her eyes were green; wouldn’t you just laugh at what she says, having forgotten it immediately? Instead you’re pulled into further confusion, the disturbing mix of her man height, man walk, man hands, man shoulders, and man forehead with her very female take on such irritating qualities as hauteur, mockery, ridicule, impatience, insolence, condescension, fury, indignation, madness, bubble-brainedness and shit-losing, in effortlessly modulating subtle shadings of high bitchiness. This all centers of course on her neck, which you want to strangle, especially when it physically protrudes on the sides, and her adam’s apple wobbles, as she performs one of the above-mentioned irritating qualities. You do not want to strangle Scarlett Johannson or Zoey Deschanel. Add to that the fangs (she’d be great in a Van Helsing squealquel), the eyebrows that can wilt a carrot, and that awkward hairwhip move that only a gangly teenager who’s been mercilessly teased for years can pull off, and it’s almost, almost possible to not realize that she’s got a totally bitching bod. Completing the effect is the most effective eyelid acting of this generation. When James Lipton had her on the Actor’s Studio his first question of course was about the eyelid acting, how he uses her work to train his students but they never get it, what’s her secret, to which she replied, in that unctuous yet silly manner, “I dunno, I guess it just comes nat-rullly”. And that’s the point, isn’t it, the complete innocence of it all, the centuries of forgetting required, you just want to ask her what’s the deal, even though you know this will only result in those lips, those lips moving, squishing around some statement so contrary, so implausible, all you want to do is stick your tongue inside her mouth, even though you know she will suck up your whole psyche and mash it down like another chain-smoked cigarette.
It’s in the bone structure, that pure Aristotelian form more like a philosophy than something physical. Every face you see you’ve seen before, but bone structure, that’s unique, and you have to contend with its uniqueness. And hers is almost perfect, like F. Scott Fitzgerald said Katherine Hepburn’s was, and it frames her shaming smile, lights up her vacant eyes, brings depth to her relentlessly unforgiving brow. She gives you nothing, no hope of any leverage over any aspect of her, no control of anything now in your possession. You are only thankful you are tormented from afar, that you don’t have to hear the laugh if you were to ask her out on a date.
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Hesitation
I pray to be a better
portal of the sublime
the little voice big laughs back
the perverse is just as holy
portal of the sublime
the little voice big laughs back
the perverse is just as holy
Saturday, November 19, 2011
For Some Friends Who Are Experiencing Change
"As with Lester Young’s tenor and Shakespeare’s sonnets, we measure each autumn against an exalted standard acquired early." – Patrick Kurp
Sonny Rollins, Albert Ayler, David Murray, James Carter…
It’s all the same damn tenor, renewed another spring.
Those sonnets they call Shakespeare, ever distant, ever perfect,
Bloom at last as lessons to his son, to whom he is anonymous,
As he is to us, in the meshes of a queen.
Another autumn
Where the past has more of me than it ever has before
And the future is a language I have still to learn.
Does one have more at death or when one’s born?
Or is it all the same, for all the negotiations in between
With a world that changes easier than do we?
Why must we get away from the perfect
After we first catch sight of it: the golden tree,
The flowing reed, the words that fill the emptiest of hearts?
How can we endure the experience again
In a lesser ecstasy? All the autumns I have known
I feel in one lone shudder of the wind—
What magic I’m allowed comes from beyond
What I can see, some receptacle for feeling
Finds its way, through all that’s turned in time
From phantom into stone.
You’re free until you see
The scrapbooks of your parents browned by time
That showed a life that somehow, somewhere else, still is real.
How I wish this thing would rhyme, in pleasant measured meters,
That the afflicted saxophone could make the dry and woody tone
My parents loved, or that the sonnets could remain a mystery for all,
Not mere biography, however stronger they become for being human.
For I remember every face that ever looked right back on me
As I spoke for the first time of a sublime– how much softer
The leaves should be, more knowing of the winter.
Instead
My arms are pulled in marching by the children I’ve looked after,
Smiling that I'm with them in this phalanx of emotion,
Common purpose, the perfection that remains inside ideals.
There’s only the sublime ahead, the hideous in knots
That must be something else, and shall be turned by thought
Into the thing that wraps us up, regardless of whether the mind
Believes it will or not.
Sonny Rollins, Albert Ayler, David Murray, James Carter…
It’s all the same damn tenor, renewed another spring.
Those sonnets they call Shakespeare, ever distant, ever perfect,
Bloom at last as lessons to his son, to whom he is anonymous,
As he is to us, in the meshes of a queen.
Another autumn
Where the past has more of me than it ever has before
And the future is a language I have still to learn.
Does one have more at death or when one’s born?
Or is it all the same, for all the negotiations in between
With a world that changes easier than do we?
Why must we get away from the perfect
After we first catch sight of it: the golden tree,
The flowing reed, the words that fill the emptiest of hearts?
How can we endure the experience again
In a lesser ecstasy? All the autumns I have known
I feel in one lone shudder of the wind—
What magic I’m allowed comes from beyond
What I can see, some receptacle for feeling
Finds its way, through all that’s turned in time
From phantom into stone.
You’re free until you see
The scrapbooks of your parents browned by time
That showed a life that somehow, somewhere else, still is real.
How I wish this thing would rhyme, in pleasant measured meters,
That the afflicted saxophone could make the dry and woody tone
My parents loved, or that the sonnets could remain a mystery for all,
Not mere biography, however stronger they become for being human.
For I remember every face that ever looked right back on me
As I spoke for the first time of a sublime– how much softer
The leaves should be, more knowing of the winter.
Instead
My arms are pulled in marching by the children I’ve looked after,
Smiling that I'm with them in this phalanx of emotion,
Common purpose, the perfection that remains inside ideals.
There’s only the sublime ahead, the hideous in knots
That must be something else, and shall be turned by thought
Into the thing that wraps us up, regardless of whether the mind
Believes it will or not.
Thursday, November 17, 2011
The 11:11 Radio Station
I had a lovely conversation with Faith Freed on her radio program that aired live on 11-11-11 at 11:00 Pacific time. We discussed the personal, collective and spiritual meaning of the 11-11-11 "thing" over the course of the one-hour broadcast. Here's an audio replay of the podcast for those who want to listen in:
The Meaning of 11:11:11
The Meaning of 11:11:11
Sunday, November 6, 2011
Poem for the Changing of the Clocks
Horns and warts in mirrors
So we crave upon the sublime:
The sunsets by Lorrain,
The gold at witching hour in useless deco…
It’s a balance we've escaped,
A peace our love (as movement) leaves behind
To the perfect green eye of the machine…
For consciousness acquires
The weightlessness of truth
But the universal soup puts it to use
In pattern turned to pattern
Successively more distant
‘Til finally it becomes just what we seek
(For we could never see it otherwise):
The workings of the clock that never was…
What seemed to give a measure to our movement...
But the springs must re-elongate into lines,
We always must re-calibrate the gauges,
What we are moves further from the point
At which we began and will end – or so we suppose
With only a face on a clock to remind us,
Its backlit sun, its mechanized moon.
So we crave upon the sublime:
The sunsets by Lorrain,
The gold at witching hour in useless deco…
It’s a balance we've escaped,
A peace our love (as movement) leaves behind
To the perfect green eye of the machine…
For consciousness acquires
The weightlessness of truth
But the universal soup puts it to use
In pattern turned to pattern
Successively more distant
‘Til finally it becomes just what we seek
(For we could never see it otherwise):
The workings of the clock that never was…
What seemed to give a measure to our movement...
But the springs must re-elongate into lines,
We always must re-calibrate the gauges,
What we are moves further from the point
At which we began and will end – or so we suppose
With only a face on a clock to remind us,
Its backlit sun, its mechanized moon.
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Autumn Song
The colors widen, the air is alive,
Full of dying fire and sweet decay.
The forest opens out to deeper vistas,
Orange distances, death in all its finery.
Firewood dries, as the grasses, scythed, are tied
And rasping seeds that rattle in the gourds
Whisper in between the flickering crickets,
The scraping of the leaves, as silence sounds its chords,
A dissonance like frost, a brittle harvest,
This is all that is, and all that never was
As life receives the endless gift of ending
And death is made forever, all ephemeras
That cling in ragged trees, or is it me
These more-than-human feelings are about?
I quail before the depths that fill with air,
The long horizon and its gentle mists of doubt.
Posted for Gooseberry's Garden, just because...
Full of dying fire and sweet decay.
The forest opens out to deeper vistas,
Orange distances, death in all its finery.
Firewood dries, as the grasses, scythed, are tied
And rasping seeds that rattle in the gourds
Whisper in between the flickering crickets,
The scraping of the leaves, as silence sounds its chords,
A dissonance like frost, a brittle harvest,
This is all that is, and all that never was
As life receives the endless gift of ending
And death is made forever, all ephemeras
That cling in ragged trees, or is it me
These more-than-human feelings are about?
I quail before the depths that fill with air,
The long horizon and its gentle mists of doubt.
Posted for Gooseberry's Garden, just because...
Monday, October 17, 2011
October Day in Salem
He liked being poor, the dusty cigarettes, the watery eyes, no judgment and no pretense, no achievements to be pulled away, just a spinning wheel of chaos: who would come home with a purple eye today? Whose possessions would be thrown out on the street? Who would suddenly, without warning, leave town, and why? The dinners at the mission are always warm. Most people on the street will give you coins to share some food. It's smoothed of complications here, you're either homeless or an outlaw who steals a wall and ceiling from a kind and hardened sucker who knows just what it feels like, holding out a key with bleeding heart still beating. How many a disability check can feed! All these faces tell such stories, of judgment turned inside until there's nothing that is left but hungry eyes. Satan is called Angel here, 'cos he offers up a homemade cure for shame: a moment of innocent crying.
He was happy to be poor, to poke each others' garbage for the cans turned in to cigarettes, the donuts that can keep the mornings peaceful, staring blankly on a bench. A day does not go by without a few more lives to save, by slapping them to consciousness or pulling off their chains if other resuscitation efforts fail. The workers go inside, to a place no one can get them, while the poor stay unprotected, only able to see themselves in every face that mills around, and so they share the little that they have, as a kind of wordless prayer, that there will be always enough, though they stay forever hungry and holy in the letting go of more. It's easy to be poor, to be one step away from falling through an endless crack. They like it that way, the tightrope that is humming like the voice of some dead god, who hung so many children for the crime of disrespect, who hang here floating still in an endless wind of pagans, with pilgrims just as monochrome, just as quick to condemn.
He finds a rose on a gravestone carved 200 years too late, for one of the unburied girls who lost one of her lives, and he gives it to another girl, who waits for something else, and he moves on like the wind to ask for money from the one protesting Christian, who warns of hell eternal to the goblins and the ghosts. He has too good a heart to tell him that it's all his fault, that he brought these demons here from all the hatred of his kind born of too much love for saviors. Instead, he asks for pennies, a thing that won't be given from a heart of Christian love, but what he later finds like autumn leaves in an alleyway the tourists never see, a present that's the present: a hamburger at Wendy's.
He was happy to be poor, to poke each others' garbage for the cans turned in to cigarettes, the donuts that can keep the mornings peaceful, staring blankly on a bench. A day does not go by without a few more lives to save, by slapping them to consciousness or pulling off their chains if other resuscitation efforts fail. The workers go inside, to a place no one can get them, while the poor stay unprotected, only able to see themselves in every face that mills around, and so they share the little that they have, as a kind of wordless prayer, that there will be always enough, though they stay forever hungry and holy in the letting go of more. It's easy to be poor, to be one step away from falling through an endless crack. They like it that way, the tightrope that is humming like the voice of some dead god, who hung so many children for the crime of disrespect, who hang here floating still in an endless wind of pagans, with pilgrims just as monochrome, just as quick to condemn.
He finds a rose on a gravestone carved 200 years too late, for one of the unburied girls who lost one of her lives, and he gives it to another girl, who waits for something else, and he moves on like the wind to ask for money from the one protesting Christian, who warns of hell eternal to the goblins and the ghosts. He has too good a heart to tell him that it's all his fault, that he brought these demons here from all the hatred of his kind born of too much love for saviors. Instead, he asks for pennies, a thing that won't be given from a heart of Christian love, but what he later finds like autumn leaves in an alleyway the tourists never see, a present that's the present: a hamburger at Wendy's.
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
October Surprise
Computers do all the work now
we can spend our time being greedy
eaten away by the voraciousness of money
with the best and the brightest captured by Wall Street
not for our skills but our obedience
to the lie that we'll die if our money stops growing
or if we run out of new things to buy
when it's only the extra that's always extracted
that needs this lifestyle to live,
that needs charcoal fields
where once there were cities,
that needs families
who once had real homes.
Red ivy climbs innocent buildings
where everyone tiptoes, afraid that a child
might blurt out their secret
hidden in plain view
behind a shameful veil.
O how I lack compassion,
how I missed the sheer joy of it all,
the bantering over frivolous things
like deadlines and profits and sales goals and spin
that bloom and wither without consequence
just the feeling we have
glad to be connected to a purpose
for that moment.
we can spend our time being greedy
eaten away by the voraciousness of money
with the best and the brightest captured by Wall Street
not for our skills but our obedience
to the lie that we'll die if our money stops growing
or if we run out of new things to buy
when it's only the extra that's always extracted
that needs this lifestyle to live,
that needs charcoal fields
where once there were cities,
that needs families
who once had real homes.
Red ivy climbs innocent buildings
where everyone tiptoes, afraid that a child
might blurt out their secret
hidden in plain view
behind a shameful veil.
O how I lack compassion,
how I missed the sheer joy of it all,
the bantering over frivolous things
like deadlines and profits and sales goals and spin
that bloom and wither without consequence
just the feeling we have
glad to be connected to a purpose
for that moment.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Street Poems
‘IF THE PEOPLE OF THIS NATION UNDERSTOOD OUR BANKING AND MONETARY SYSTEM I BELIEVE THERE WOULD BE A REVOLUTION TOMORROW MORNING’ –HENRY FORD
DON'T MACE ME BRO, MY MOM IS HERE
LOANSHARKS ATE MY WORLD
THE ONLY WAY TO DEAL WITH AN UNFREE WORLD IS TO BECOME SO ABSOLUTELY FREE THAT YOUR VERY EXISTENCE IS AN ACT OF REBELLION
SOMETHING'S WRONG WHEN A TEACHER PAYS MORE TAXES THAN GENERAL ELECTRIC
‘IT’S DIFFICULT TO GET A MAN TO UNDERSTAND SOMETHING WHEN HIS JOB DEPENDS ON NOT UNDERSTANDING IT’ –UPTON SINCLAIR
WE ARE TOO BIG TO FAIL
THIS IS SO NOT OVER
Monday, October 10, 2011
Al, Gone Vertical
Born on Independence Day
He died on Yom Kippur
A long, long way from Brooklyn
The toughest man Mike Tyson ever met,
Who carried still the relish of a child.
The air and soil are silver,
The trees and grasses black
But it’s not enough to show
What he has done
To a game and a world
We see differently now:
The rebel who can win by just surviving,
The masks of Halloween worn every day,
A team for all the outcast individuals,
A way to compel honor into honesty:
Embracing the brutality,
Setting free creativity,
Honoring the disease
And the sacred field whose wizards must be appeased.
They wear the colors of the color blind,
They find their dream in darkness,
That thing always excluded
From the other half-right codes.
Their greatness can only be perverse
Because it can stay human.
It’s a season of deaths, of the innovators,
Whose dreams were never really possible,
But we dream of further places thanks to them—
Here’s to a man who held onto his dream
24/7 for nearly 50 years
With the tenacity of a savage:
The team, the brand, the mystique—all his!
We know him in the thing that he created
But we’ve never known the man we loved to hate,
The man in black who gave it all in service
So we could go more vertical to the light.
Friday, October 7, 2011
Stevens Textplication 11: Indian River
The philosopher Martin Heidegger, paraphrasing the poet Frederich Holderlin, wrote* "not only have the gods and the god fled, but the divine radiance has become extinguished in the world’s history. Man can no longer discern the default of God as a default." In this "destitute time," poets are the ones uniquely situated to enter "the extreme oblivion of being" and extract from this abyss the holy traces of what was lost: "Poets are the mortals who, singing earnestly of the wine-god, sense the trace of the fugitive gods, stay on the god’s tracks, and so trace for their kindred mortals the way toward the turning."
This Romantic function of the poet is also pursued by Wallace Stevens in his short poem from 1917, "Indian River":
The trade-wind jingles the rings in the nets around the racks
by the docks on Indian River.
It is the same jingle of the water among the roots under the
banks of the palmettoes,
It is the same jingle of the red-bird breasting the orange-trees
out of the cedars
Yet there is no spring in Florida, neither in boskage perdu, nor
on the nunnery beaches.
Dense with Floridian flora and fauna like a travel postcard, the poem is divided into four long lines. The first three deal with natural, or at least un-human, phenomena, and are united by the word "jingle" (rhymes with jungle), thrice repeated as in the Christmas song "Jingle Bells." The seasonal irony is resolved in the fourth line, where the jingling stops and there is "no spring." This last line also shifts the focus to human things, specifically humans in interaction with nature, more specifically soldiers placed in danger ("perdu") amid boskage (a grove or thicket of trees and shrubs), and nuns in training on beaches. There is "no spring" for either of these archetypal humans: no life after death for soliders, no spiritual rebirth for nuns, at least while they interact oddly and uneasily with the things of this earth.
And therein lies the sharp pain of man’s fallen state, in contrast to the jingle, which is the unseen dynamism, the life force of the cosmos, that animates and unites the winds, the deep waters, the birds, the orange trees. The soldiers and nuns, when truly seen (brought out of their concealments of ambush and habit, respectively), are revealed as out of place, disconnected to the God they worship, so wrapped in the uniforms of human creation they do not even recognize "the default of God." They are blank figures and forms, nuns and soldiers, despite the immense silence of ocean and forest that surrounds them.
All we have is the name, Indian River, which holds within it a trace, of the peoples who were once there, who were at one with the fugitive gods, the sentience of nature.
* Martin Heidegger, from "What are Poets For?", in Poetry, Language, Thought, pp. 91-94, Perennial Edition, translation by Albert Hofstadter
This Romantic function of the poet is also pursued by Wallace Stevens in his short poem from 1917, "Indian River":
The trade-wind jingles the rings in the nets around the racks
by the docks on Indian River.
It is the same jingle of the water among the roots under the
banks of the palmettoes,
It is the same jingle of the red-bird breasting the orange-trees
out of the cedars
Yet there is no spring in Florida, neither in boskage perdu, nor
on the nunnery beaches.
Dense with Floridian flora and fauna like a travel postcard, the poem is divided into four long lines. The first three deal with natural, or at least un-human, phenomena, and are united by the word "jingle" (rhymes with jungle), thrice repeated as in the Christmas song "Jingle Bells." The seasonal irony is resolved in the fourth line, where the jingling stops and there is "no spring." This last line also shifts the focus to human things, specifically humans in interaction with nature, more specifically soldiers placed in danger ("perdu") amid boskage (a grove or thicket of trees and shrubs), and nuns in training on beaches. There is "no spring" for either of these archetypal humans: no life after death for soliders, no spiritual rebirth for nuns, at least while they interact oddly and uneasily with the things of this earth.
And therein lies the sharp pain of man’s fallen state, in contrast to the jingle, which is the unseen dynamism, the life force of the cosmos, that animates and unites the winds, the deep waters, the birds, the orange trees. The soldiers and nuns, when truly seen (brought out of their concealments of ambush and habit, respectively), are revealed as out of place, disconnected to the God they worship, so wrapped in the uniforms of human creation they do not even recognize "the default of God." They are blank figures and forms, nuns and soldiers, despite the immense silence of ocean and forest that surrounds them.
All we have is the name, Indian River, which holds within it a trace, of the peoples who were once there, who were at one with the fugitive gods, the sentience of nature.
* Martin Heidegger, from "What are Poets For?", in Poetry, Language, Thought, pp. 91-94, Perennial Edition, translation by Albert Hofstadter
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Memory
Translation from the German of Frederich Hölderlin
The northeast blows,
My favorite of the winds,
From its spirit of fire
And kind lift I prophesy sailors.
But go now and greet
The beautiful Garonne,
And the gardens of Bordeaux
There, where the sharp bank cuts
The path and the current falls deep
Below the stream, but looks
Come from above, a noble pair
Of oak and silver poplar;
Still I remember this well, how
The broad peak bows down
The elms, above the mill,
But the courtyard fig tree grows.
Go there on a holiday
Brown women walking
Silken ground,
In the month of March,
When night and day are the same,
And on lazy trails,
Heavy with golden dreams,
Where lulling air tails.
But it is rich,
Full of dark light,
This fragrant cup
Of sleep; it's sweet
Under the shadow of slumber.
It's not good to think
The mortal is soulless.
But it’s good to converse
In the voice of the heart
And hear much as love emerges
And acts, occurrences happen.
But where are my friends? Bellarmin
With his companion? Some are afraid
To go to the source;
Where the wealth begins,
In the sea. They,
Like painters, pull together
The beauty of the Earth and disdain
War not winged, and
Live for years alone, below
The leafless mast, where night does not shine through
The city's festivities,
Nor its strings and indigenous dances.
But now the Indians are
The people left,
There on the airy spit,
And mountains of grapes fall
To the Dordogne, which along
With the mighty Garonne
Empties to the sea
That comes from the stream. Abounding,
It gives memories to the waters,
And to the lovers' eyes entwined,
But what remains, the poet founds.
The northeast blows,
My favorite of the winds,
From its spirit of fire
And kind lift I prophesy sailors.
But go now and greet
The beautiful Garonne,
And the gardens of Bordeaux
There, where the sharp bank cuts
The path and the current falls deep
Below the stream, but looks
Come from above, a noble pair
Of oak and silver poplar;
Still I remember this well, how
The broad peak bows down
The elms, above the mill,
But the courtyard fig tree grows.
Go there on a holiday
Brown women walking
Silken ground,
In the month of March,
When night and day are the same,
And on lazy trails,
Heavy with golden dreams,
Where lulling air tails.
But it is rich,
Full of dark light,
This fragrant cup
Of sleep; it's sweet
Under the shadow of slumber.
It's not good to think
The mortal is soulless.
But it’s good to converse
In the voice of the heart
And hear much as love emerges
And acts, occurrences happen.
But where are my friends? Bellarmin
With his companion? Some are afraid
To go to the source;
Where the wealth begins,
In the sea. They,
Like painters, pull together
The beauty of the Earth and disdain
War not winged, and
Live for years alone, below
The leafless mast, where night does not shine through
The city's festivities,
Nor its strings and indigenous dances.
But now the Indians are
The people left,
There on the airy spit,
And mountains of grapes fall
To the Dordogne, which along
With the mighty Garonne
Empties to the sea
That comes from the stream. Abounding,
It gives memories to the waters,
And to the lovers' eyes entwined,
But what remains, the poet founds.
Monday, October 3, 2011
Translation of a Translation of a Translation of the World Sung into Creation
Caedmon, from the fifth century, is considered the first poet of the (Old) English language. His poems survive in one nine-line fragment, the result of a dream in which he was told to “sing the beginning of creation.” The authenticity of what has been transcribed down through centuries of monks and orders is questionable, but I do believe, as with the stories of Jesus, that something genuine is embedded therein. To tackle the translation problem, I handled it "homeophonically," trying to find the nearest sound rather than strictly semantic equivalence, since what apparently separated Caedmon from other seekers (according to Bede) was the quality of his sound. In that vein I am also struck by the homeophonic resemblance of the name Caedmon to Adam Kadmon, the perfect (spiritually realized) man from Kaballah lore who becomes a creator himself.
The earliest known (mid-8th century) transcription is below the translation. See Poems and Poetics for more insights on this topic.
New sky one heir sun heaven’s gracious guardian
mightiest measure one mind may make
work of our father as he wanders highways
seeds dripping from astral days
the airiest drops for the children
heaven’s till roof holy shapen
this middle world mankind’s guardian
seeds dripping aether diadem
firmness folding free for digging men
nu scylun hergan hefaenricaes uard
metudæs maecti end his modgidanc
uerc uuldurfadur swe he uundra gihwaes
eci dryctin or astelidæ
he aerist scop aelda barnum
heben til hrofe haleg scepen.
tha middungeard moncynnæs uard
eci dryctin æfter tiadæ
firum foldu frea allmectig
The earliest known (mid-8th century) transcription is below the translation. See Poems and Poetics for more insights on this topic.
New sky one heir sun heaven’s gracious guardian
mightiest measure one mind may make
work of our father as he wanders highways
seeds dripping from astral days
the airiest drops for the children
heaven’s till roof holy shapen
this middle world mankind’s guardian
seeds dripping aether diadem
firmness folding free for digging men
nu scylun hergan hefaenricaes uard
metudæs maecti end his modgidanc
uerc uuldurfadur swe he uundra gihwaes
eci dryctin or astelidæ
he aerist scop aelda barnum
heben til hrofe haleg scepen.
tha middungeard moncynnæs uard
eci dryctin æfter tiadæ
firum foldu frea allmectig
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Mitzvahs for Bobby Fischer
Of course our brains are filled with shit,
prescriptioned to necrosis –
we're disabled like a program
with the unbridled smut of science
– so what?
That’s what people do – afraid of others
finding them out in every moment
– if you knew one, you’d understand.
Of course they’re stealing all we do
in the moment that we do it,
and trying to keep us from our dreams,
monitoring our thoughts to hold against us
- but most of us are happy just to be noticed,
we don’t live in constant fear of being famous,
for no one understands another person,
we open up like flowers to learn ourselves.
The only friend you ever had was the game
and you’d have played it by yourself as beat the world
for all it mattered.
You gave your love away all to the game
and those who played it felt your love enough to save you
when you holed up from the world’s love in a dying stranger’s house.
How could the billions help but fall for you right there
with your smile, your wit, your boxer’s feints
– those things of which you were barely aware?
There were moves, and there was everything else.
But what if there were no more moves,
the consequences all were visited
and childhood finally closed its silver doors to choosing?
What if the mind had to leave the board
and had to grapple with beliefs,
with love affairs and politics
– the art of war without weapons –
as the possibility narrowed of escape
– how could one believe in mercy
or await a human touch?
Truth must be impossible
when the mind conceives all possibilities,
when every forking path contains a flower.
Human speech is mostly of forgiveness
- the gulf we face below the light we left.
prescriptioned to necrosis –
we're disabled like a program
with the unbridled smut of science
– so what?
That’s what people do – afraid of others
finding them out in every moment
– if you knew one, you’d understand.
Of course they’re stealing all we do
in the moment that we do it,
and trying to keep us from our dreams,
monitoring our thoughts to hold against us
- but most of us are happy just to be noticed,
we don’t live in constant fear of being famous,
for no one understands another person,
we open up like flowers to learn ourselves.
The only friend you ever had was the game
and you’d have played it by yourself as beat the world
for all it mattered.
You gave your love away all to the game
and those who played it felt your love enough to save you
when you holed up from the world’s love in a dying stranger’s house.
How could the billions help but fall for you right there
with your smile, your wit, your boxer’s feints
– those things of which you were barely aware?
There were moves, and there was everything else.
But what if there were no more moves,
the consequences all were visited
and childhood finally closed its silver doors to choosing?
What if the mind had to leave the board
and had to grapple with beliefs,
with love affairs and politics
– the art of war without weapons –
as the possibility narrowed of escape
– how could one believe in mercy
or await a human touch?
Truth must be impossible
when the mind conceives all possibilities,
when every forking path contains a flower.
Human speech is mostly of forgiveness
- the gulf we face below the light we left.
Monday, September 19, 2011
Another Town
A response to Hannah Stephenson’s Town
It starts with a railroad, a fort nearby
with plenty of guns in its armory,
and a promise of gold, silver, copper, oil, coal,
for the hills to be bowed toward the practical,
extractable enough for Eastern financiers
to send along their goonies and their threshers
and hang posters that spoke of a heroes bounty
to every down and out outcast who teemed in the cities.
They brought in the necessities: a saloon, a smelter,
a brothel, a bank, a slaughterhouse, a factory for plaster
and inevitably, ministers, to teach about the curse of Eve.
As families and graveyards grew, they believed they’d never leave
but the children soon became bored
with the choice of liquor and the lord
and moved upstate, to get away from all the gratitude
for the blood sacrifice of Jesus Christ, from the attitude
of acceptance for the losses in the mines and the fires,
of reverence for the well-connected vampires
who owned the town whole as everybody knew
and mixed its rivers red with the cadmium blue.
The price of silver dropped, and the town just dispersed
but something stayed behind, a right to be there, with the curse
that hung inside the lace, the last trappings of an outpost,
the god-forsaken hideaway of ghosts.
How we cherish them now, as we walk this blessed town.
How we pray that we could raise it from the ground.
It starts with a railroad, a fort nearby
with plenty of guns in its armory,
and a promise of gold, silver, copper, oil, coal,
for the hills to be bowed toward the practical,
extractable enough for Eastern financiers
to send along their goonies and their threshers
and hang posters that spoke of a heroes bounty
to every down and out outcast who teemed in the cities.
They brought in the necessities: a saloon, a smelter,
a brothel, a bank, a slaughterhouse, a factory for plaster
and inevitably, ministers, to teach about the curse of Eve.
As families and graveyards grew, they believed they’d never leave
but the children soon became bored
with the choice of liquor and the lord
and moved upstate, to get away from all the gratitude
for the blood sacrifice of Jesus Christ, from the attitude
of acceptance for the losses in the mines and the fires,
of reverence for the well-connected vampires
who owned the town whole as everybody knew
and mixed its rivers red with the cadmium blue.
The price of silver dropped, and the town just dispersed
but something stayed behind, a right to be there, with the curse
that hung inside the lace, the last trappings of an outpost,
the god-forsaken hideaway of ghosts.
How we cherish them now, as we walk this blessed town.
How we pray that we could raise it from the ground.
Friday, September 16, 2011
Stevens Textplication 10: In the Carolinas
I should have known when I began this quixotic series of explications that this day would arrive. For we’ve come to “In the Carolinas,” the first poem I really ever read by Wallace Stevens. In the interest of full disclosure, I have to say:
• I don’t have any idea at all of what it means
• I don’t want to have any idea at all of what it means
• It’s fair to say my own poetic career depends on not knowing what it means
Perhaps I should back up a bit and explain. I was in my first year of law school, and one of the techniques I employed to counter the mind-numbing boredom of that experience was to borrow poetry volumes essentially at random from the tiny branch library in Towson, Maryland near where I lived. The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens came, if I recall, after The Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters, though, in truth, a teacher in college had tried to introduce me to “The Idea of Order at Key West” but it didn’t take (as academic introductions so rarely do). I remembered nothing of that poem when I decided on the book, but I did recall the exotic fact that Stevens was a lawyer, and I suppose that made me look at this volume a bit more longingly than I would that of, say, Susan Schutz or Horace Gregory.
I don’t remember checking it out except as a book among many, but I remember vividly, later, sitting in the laundry room, reading “In the Carolinas” for the first time. This was poetry as I’d never seen it before. For starters, it was so short, leaving one hungry and hanging. It had no recognizable form or logic or even point (other than perhaps how wonderful spring is). It put words together that had no business being together (lilacs and Carolina, butterflies and cabins, aspic and nipples, breasts venting honey, pine trees sweetening bodies as if one could daub on pine-sol as a cologne). And yet. And yet – there was something so magical and miraculous about the poem. This was what they said poetry was all about but what I’d never before experienced. Every association I had about lilacs, the Carolinas, butterflies, cabins, children, love and mothers swirled together and became magnified. The gelatinous bitterness of aspic – the peculiarly sweet scent of pine – recollections of Japanese prints of women framed by irises – all of these impressions poured out of me with hallucinatory fervor as I watched the laundry tumble and saw the golden light outside of fall (a day much like today).
Here was something I wanted in my movie.
I began to carry the library book around as a kind of talisman, renewing it countless times before I finally found a copy of my own. The closest thing I can find to describe the feeling – the pulsing life – dancing between my mind and this poem comes from Stevens himself, in his 1951 “Two or Three Ideas” lecture at Mt. Holyoke College (reprinted in Opus Posthumous), where he tries to describe the effect of Baudelaire’s line “J'ai longtemps habité sous de vastes portiques” [I have lived a long time under vast porticos] from “La Vie Anterieure.” Encountering this line, “the familiar experience is made unfamiliar and from that time on, whenever we think of that particular scene, we remember how we held our breath and how the hungry doves of another world rose out of nothingness and whistled away.”
Engagement with something as elusive as all that, needless to say, presented certain challenges. The world Stevens punctured in his poems was the world I lived in, the dissatisfactions I felt growing like grapes on a vine were in his hands miraculously time-lapsed and resolved, and the harvested fruits served in rich panoply of flavors. And what of my own nascent poems? How could I be free to pursue an individual vision with such hot jewels in my pockets? It was so close to what I was trying to say, yet it shone from another planet, a place obtained after years of complete solitude and total contemplation.
The only alternative was to learn the delicate art of not reading Stevens. Years later, when I got around to actually reading Stevens again, the goblins had vanished: his take was so individual it offered freedom, not constraint, but in my delusion of youth I’d been programmed to think that those with similar feelings were threats to survival, so I viewed him as some long-lost older brother who always got to the secret passageway under the stairs or the brandy in the wine cellar before I did. The thought he was a teacher, an ancestor, one of the great poets of the English language, didn’t much occur. And so, the tones of “In the Carolinas” went wafting, unexplored.
Perhaps it’s best to take the advice of Dr. Macksey, the same professor that tried to introduce me to Stevens, who once told me “words don’t fail you soon enough,” and just let the poem speak, if not for itself, for me:
In the Carolinas
The lilacs wither in the Carolinas.
Already the butterflies flutter above the cabins.
Already new-born children interpret love
In the voices of mothers.
Timeless mother,
How is it your aspic nipples
For once vent honey?
The pine-tree sweetens my body.
The white iris beautifies me.
• I don’t have any idea at all of what it means
• I don’t want to have any idea at all of what it means
• It’s fair to say my own poetic career depends on not knowing what it means
Perhaps I should back up a bit and explain. I was in my first year of law school, and one of the techniques I employed to counter the mind-numbing boredom of that experience was to borrow poetry volumes essentially at random from the tiny branch library in Towson, Maryland near where I lived. The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens came, if I recall, after The Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters, though, in truth, a teacher in college had tried to introduce me to “The Idea of Order at Key West” but it didn’t take (as academic introductions so rarely do). I remembered nothing of that poem when I decided on the book, but I did recall the exotic fact that Stevens was a lawyer, and I suppose that made me look at this volume a bit more longingly than I would that of, say, Susan Schutz or Horace Gregory.
I don’t remember checking it out except as a book among many, but I remember vividly, later, sitting in the laundry room, reading “In the Carolinas” for the first time. This was poetry as I’d never seen it before. For starters, it was so short, leaving one hungry and hanging. It had no recognizable form or logic or even point (other than perhaps how wonderful spring is). It put words together that had no business being together (lilacs and Carolina, butterflies and cabins, aspic and nipples, breasts venting honey, pine trees sweetening bodies as if one could daub on pine-sol as a cologne). And yet. And yet – there was something so magical and miraculous about the poem. This was what they said poetry was all about but what I’d never before experienced. Every association I had about lilacs, the Carolinas, butterflies, cabins, children, love and mothers swirled together and became magnified. The gelatinous bitterness of aspic – the peculiarly sweet scent of pine – recollections of Japanese prints of women framed by irises – all of these impressions poured out of me with hallucinatory fervor as I watched the laundry tumble and saw the golden light outside of fall (a day much like today).
Here was something I wanted in my movie.
I began to carry the library book around as a kind of talisman, renewing it countless times before I finally found a copy of my own. The closest thing I can find to describe the feeling – the pulsing life – dancing between my mind and this poem comes from Stevens himself, in his 1951 “Two or Three Ideas” lecture at Mt. Holyoke College (reprinted in Opus Posthumous), where he tries to describe the effect of Baudelaire’s line “J'ai longtemps habité sous de vastes portiques” [I have lived a long time under vast porticos] from “La Vie Anterieure.” Encountering this line, “the familiar experience is made unfamiliar and from that time on, whenever we think of that particular scene, we remember how we held our breath and how the hungry doves of another world rose out of nothingness and whistled away.”
Engagement with something as elusive as all that, needless to say, presented certain challenges. The world Stevens punctured in his poems was the world I lived in, the dissatisfactions I felt growing like grapes on a vine were in his hands miraculously time-lapsed and resolved, and the harvested fruits served in rich panoply of flavors. And what of my own nascent poems? How could I be free to pursue an individual vision with such hot jewels in my pockets? It was so close to what I was trying to say, yet it shone from another planet, a place obtained after years of complete solitude and total contemplation.
The only alternative was to learn the delicate art of not reading Stevens. Years later, when I got around to actually reading Stevens again, the goblins had vanished: his take was so individual it offered freedom, not constraint, but in my delusion of youth I’d been programmed to think that those with similar feelings were threats to survival, so I viewed him as some long-lost older brother who always got to the secret passageway under the stairs or the brandy in the wine cellar before I did. The thought he was a teacher, an ancestor, one of the great poets of the English language, didn’t much occur. And so, the tones of “In the Carolinas” went wafting, unexplored.
Perhaps it’s best to take the advice of Dr. Macksey, the same professor that tried to introduce me to Stevens, who once told me “words don’t fail you soon enough,” and just let the poem speak, if not for itself, for me:
In the Carolinas
The lilacs wither in the Carolinas.
Already the butterflies flutter above the cabins.
Already new-born children interpret love
In the voices of mothers.
Timeless mother,
How is it your aspic nipples
For once vent honey?
The pine-tree sweetens my body.
The white iris beautifies me.
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Exegesis of Train Tables
6:17
The churches have closed down,
The roosters sent inland,
But the trains cry every hour
A new set of commands:
Reminders that we work
Because we forget.
6:38
The people on the train:
Birds in a flock,
Visible from far off.
6:49
Commuters bow like monks in rows of plastic seats
Separated from God by just a thin line,
White wires coming out of their ears.
7:07
The conductor one day rides the rails like a DJ riding records:
Making jokes for every sleepy voice,
Clicking tickets with impeccable rhythm,
Announcing the stops as if we really need to get off there.
The next day’s conductor can’t look us in the eyes,
He hangs his head as he walks by,
Lets the stops go by unrecognized
As if connections are not meant to be made that day.
7:13
A gentle reminder, in the monthly newsletter
Not to watch porn on your iphone
For it could offend the person sitting next to you.
No such courtesy requested for newspaper headlines
Blaring their obscenities of fear and lies.
7:38
The most private acts:
Snoring, scratching, solitaire
Performed in the tightest of quarters;
It’s become so natural, a second den.
7:44
Like a gasp the power shuts off
When the train crosses over the river bridge
As children hold their breath when passing graveyards.
7:53
A person in sandals walks off the train.
I have never seen someone without shoes here before.
Another person in sandals walks on.
8:08
When first you hit the tunnel
You wonder if the eternal is darkness like this,
But then the dimmest dirtiest bulb
Reveals a network of tracks, a city of trains,
Homes carved out even under the streets.
8:11
Movement requires silence.
The train is silent
Except for the turning of the wheels,
The oscillating fans,
The skittering of brakes.
When it’s forced to stop
The conductor blows a harmonica over the intercom.
8:21
I watch the people leave the train
Like a football coach watches his players
Go back to the locker room at halftime.
They are already defeated.
The churches have closed down,
The roosters sent inland,
But the trains cry every hour
A new set of commands:
Reminders that we work
Because we forget.
6:38
The people on the train:
Birds in a flock,
Visible from far off.
6:49
Commuters bow like monks in rows of plastic seats
Separated from God by just a thin line,
White wires coming out of their ears.
7:07
The conductor one day rides the rails like a DJ riding records:
Making jokes for every sleepy voice,
Clicking tickets with impeccable rhythm,
Announcing the stops as if we really need to get off there.
The next day’s conductor can’t look us in the eyes,
He hangs his head as he walks by,
Lets the stops go by unrecognized
As if connections are not meant to be made that day.
7:13
A gentle reminder, in the monthly newsletter
Not to watch porn on your iphone
For it could offend the person sitting next to you.
No such courtesy requested for newspaper headlines
Blaring their obscenities of fear and lies.
7:38
The most private acts:
Snoring, scratching, solitaire
Performed in the tightest of quarters;
It’s become so natural, a second den.
7:44
Like a gasp the power shuts off
When the train crosses over the river bridge
As children hold their breath when passing graveyards.
7:53
A person in sandals walks off the train.
I have never seen someone without shoes here before.
Another person in sandals walks on.
8:08
When first you hit the tunnel
You wonder if the eternal is darkness like this,
But then the dimmest dirtiest bulb
Reveals a network of tracks, a city of trains,
Homes carved out even under the streets.
8:11
Movement requires silence.
The train is silent
Except for the turning of the wheels,
The oscillating fans,
The skittering of brakes.
When it’s forced to stop
The conductor blows a harmonica over the intercom.
8:21
I watch the people leave the train
Like a football coach watches his players
Go back to the locker room at halftime.
They are already defeated.
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
The Poetry of Darshan Singh
The mystical verse of Darshan Singh (1921-1989), born 90 years ago today, is perhaps the closest we have in our modern age to the ghazals of Rumi, Hafiz and Kabir. It has the same spirit of longing, of letting everything go in pursuit of the highest love. The poems are dizzy whirls between self and world where the difference blurs, and all dogma must be dropped like a husk to get at the truth of what’s inside:
Do I hear some sound? Is it the footsteps of the Beloved?Sant Darshan Singh Ji, a Sikh who lived by all accounts the exemplary life of a saint, was that rarest combination of mystic and poet, and as such continued the lineage of the great Persian seer-poets. He lived, however, fully aware of the frailty of our spiritual life in the face of vast and unsatisfying scientific advancement, and found suitable ways to ground the divine in contemporary life, to bring the Friend closer:
Or am I being tricked by the beating of my heart?...
I follow no guide, no creed -- just an inkling of the way:
A tug at my heart leads me forward…
Your glance of abundant grace did not satisfy;
We with the seeing eye know a glance from a glance…
We have learned to commune with the moon and the stars,I can’t pretend I can do anything about his shocking obscurity, at least in the West, but at least I can share my version of one of his last poems. I’ve relied on the translations of Barry Lerner and Harbans Singh Bedi (who translated the passages above), as Urdu is too rich for my blood. Namaste, Darshan.
But we have failed to reach the heart of our neighbor…
O men of lust, beware of entering this land of love,
Here you will find only the cross and the gallows...
Seeker banished from the beatific vision, look through the eyes of your heart!
How can you see the Beloved's light with eyes of flesh and blood?
Invitation to Madness (#65)
My heart is immune now to sorrows,
I’m cured by the torment of love.
How do I bow my head now? What’s the way to your door?
The temples are strewn on the floor.
Everyone knows of a destination,
None have a clue how to get there.
That’s no spring breeze that plays in my garden,
It’s an invitation to madness with my name on it.
The spell of this life is all-too-familiar,
I’ve dreamed this dream many times before.
Who knows when the moment is right?
Go bow at the crossroads now – why wait?
O grief of love, be a balm for my heart,
Wounded by the beauty of a temptress world.
What flowers bloom in my heart and soul:
How blissful the wind lets them go.
Even now, drops don’t know their own immensity:
How concealed in each drop is the sea.
The desert came alive when I looked with eyes of love:
It shimmered in the heart of every granule of sand.
How could I deny your existence
When your beauty reflects all I am?
How can I blame my life’s sweet enemies
When my blood’s bent on drinking itself?
Darshan, why dread the spread of darkness
When your heart is on fire with endless light?
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Procrastinators of the Way
Today the subway smelled like roses
The weatherman threw up his hands
Miracles stopped working on our schedules
Systems in chaos let light through the black holes
It’s only the truth from other universes inside you
That burns to come out
You can’t hear God in these dying crickets
As much as you’ve thirsted for it
But if you listen enough, you’ll hear yourself
Surrender to God was the practice for this
The rest of the world has now gone on its way
And the one is inside, sparkling like tinsel
There are two suns now, one inside, one in the sky
They are both the same
You are without reference to others
The world is slow motion
Compared to the streams running through you
Electric like earthquakes through quartz
With a glance I become the person sitting next to me
Chanting Hebrew rhymes through the free moments
Filling up the absence with a mind
The weatherman threw up his hands
Miracles stopped working on our schedules
Systems in chaos let light through the black holes
It’s only the truth from other universes inside you
That burns to come out
You can’t hear God in these dying crickets
As much as you’ve thirsted for it
But if you listen enough, you’ll hear yourself
Surrender to God was the practice for this
The rest of the world has now gone on its way
And the one is inside, sparkling like tinsel
There are two suns now, one inside, one in the sky
They are both the same
You are without reference to others
The world is slow motion
Compared to the streams running through you
Electric like earthquakes through quartz
With a glance I become the person sitting next to me
Chanting Hebrew rhymes through the free moments
Filling up the absence with a mind
Sunday, September 11, 2011
A Child's Giggle and a Tennis Ball
Memory winds
insisting
things
remembered
of my love
have never died
just no longer
mine
inside.
insisting
things
remembered
of my love
have never died
just no longer
mine
inside.
Birthday Poem
I remember you
your eyes created day
and taught it how to rain
and made our dreaming safe
I remember you
your lips breathed life around
and gave each thing a sound
so it could all be found
I remember you
your arms brought warmth to share
legs took us everywhere
your face it showed us who and what we were
Yes I remember you -- in the far-off scent of fall
It's I myself I cannot quite recall
your eyes created day
and taught it how to rain
and made our dreaming safe
I remember you
your lips breathed life around
and gave each thing a sound
so it could all be found
I remember you
your arms brought warmth to share
legs took us everywhere
your face it showed us who and what we were
Yes I remember you -- in the far-off scent of fall
It's I myself I cannot quite recall
Friday, September 9, 2011
Between Five and Six
Friday evening at five o’clock
the faces are walking through hell
fuming like steam pipes in all Gotham's languages
wounded that they’re right
wounded that they're wrong
exasperated at being humiliated for so long
aggrieved they can no longer humiliate
anxious and worn that they are or aren’t noticed
tired how they’ve sold themselves out
purses hang low to the sidewalks
cell phones are clenched down on ears
people who barely still speak to each other are not
it’s too much to look at new fashion displays
too hard to take in the lines at the subways
the buildings themselves are now adversaries
of memories, decay and transient gray
if the people still at work almost smiling weren’t discreet
they’d be pissed off at all of them too
for who is to blame when lives have no purpose
and they’ve chased a string down to its end?
All of it hits in that moment before
the horrible smell
the deafening sound
the vacuum-packed sausage of crowds:
Happy Hour at the Friday night bars
what they’ve been waiting for all week
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