One moment in the window
she recognises the glass mask.
The door jerks closed
and she's somewhere near
Central...or Newtown
and reading Ursula Le Guin.
A few rows ahead
and child shudders out howls
in intoxicated hysteria
at the contents of his mother's purse,
on their way to Mortdale.
On the other side of night
two students linger
in the lung of
David Foster Wallace
enjoying the still dread
of the bar's dense air.
As a man remains at his desk,
admiring his handwriting
for the seventh time.
Since he decided 'home'
had evaporated in the drought.
Now knowing that girl
from lunch has grown
into the park bench.
Waiting for light to lift the moon's
cold whimpers and
cloaked paralysis.
And all the while
we're making tea.
Waiting for the kettle
to squeal
and relieve death's silence
so we can talk again.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Noel Rowe- a fine poet and lecturer
Pentecost
It is a simple thing for you to light the fire
early in the morning. You take the wood,
smelling still of earth and air despite the axe,
you take the smallest pieces first, barely more
than splinters, place them cross-wise
on yesterday’s discarded news, and touch it all
with your finger spreading flame until the dead words
begin to glow, and break.
Yesterday, we buried him:
and with him, more than half your life. Habits shaped
for thirty-six years of marriage hang about the house
and wonder what to do. So you, though you know
he will not need his usual cup of tea,
will get up, all the same, will touch
above the fireplace the shelf he made for you, and let
your whole sorrow hang by one hand,
then bend to make the fire,
to take its fierce shadow in your palm.
Afterwards
The street that took us every day
to hear the poets read
this morning carries on
as if we were never here
as if it was only ever interested
in selling shoes
I’ve taken my position
in the corner of a coffee shop
where I can watch passers by
and in a Judith Herzberg poem read
that making friends
requires not persistence but pause
She has just this morning left the city
having said when I hoped we’d meet again
life is not very long
her voice conveying not sorrow
but something that might come afterwards
the sound of being unencumbered
Looking up from her poem I see
crossing the street in my direction
a bearded man dragging his right leg
he’s wearing red runners and
blossoming at his knees
a full white petticoat
It is a simple thing for you to light the fire
early in the morning. You take the wood,
smelling still of earth and air despite the axe,
you take the smallest pieces first, barely more
than splinters, place them cross-wise
on yesterday’s discarded news, and touch it all
with your finger spreading flame until the dead words
begin to glow, and break.
Yesterday, we buried him:
and with him, more than half your life. Habits shaped
for thirty-six years of marriage hang about the house
and wonder what to do. So you, though you know
he will not need his usual cup of tea,
will get up, all the same, will touch
above the fireplace the shelf he made for you, and let
your whole sorrow hang by one hand,
then bend to make the fire,
to take its fierce shadow in your palm.
Afterwards
The street that took us every day
to hear the poets read
this morning carries on
as if we were never here
as if it was only ever interested
in selling shoes
I’ve taken my position
in the corner of a coffee shop
where I can watch passers by
and in a Judith Herzberg poem read
that making friends
requires not persistence but pause
She has just this morning left the city
having said when I hoped we’d meet again
life is not very long
her voice conveying not sorrow
but something that might come afterwards
the sound of being unencumbered
Looking up from her poem I see
crossing the street in my direction
a bearded man dragging his right leg
he’s wearing red runners and
blossoming at his knees
a full white petticoat
Robert Adamson
ÉVENTAIL: FOR MERY IN PARIS
Writing this in sepia ink on a Japanese fan,
pain slants my calligraphy
this way, sex just under the cap of my skull.
Dreams taunt your existence
as you swish by in raw silk
until the words I use lose meaning
and my best lines twang like limpold lace.
This metaphor thick with blood
trembles as my mind approaches the blank
folds in the rice paper, writing
on your arms, this scrawl scrolling
through you, each letter a link in the chain
between my head and the bed, a text
of splintering syllables in which
time comes apart, pricking your skin –
the joke’s our meaning, gnarled
with the word-knots coming undone
where your breast shines with the sepia
ink and the sheets blot out thinking.
Smudged with love, your bum’s a haze
of lavender oil as I rub this in.
Writing this in sepia ink on a Japanese fan,
pain slants my calligraphy
this way, sex just under the cap of my skull.
Dreams taunt your existence
as you swish by in raw silk
until the words I use lose meaning
and my best lines twang like limpold lace.
This metaphor thick with blood
trembles as my mind approaches the blank
folds in the rice paper, writing
on your arms, this scrawl scrolling
through you, each letter a link in the chain
between my head and the bed, a text
of splintering syllables in which
time comes apart, pricking your skin –
the joke’s our meaning, gnarled
with the word-knots coming undone
where your breast shines with the sepia
ink and the sheets blot out thinking.
Smudged with love, your bum’s a haze
of lavender oil as I rub this in.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Norah, My Grandma
In ode to you
I lick my fingers
smeared with mustard pickles
from the jar.
I smile your smile
and enjoy it more
than the finest truffle or
caviar.
I lick my fingers
smeared with mustard pickles
from the jar.
I smile your smile
and enjoy it more
than the finest truffle or
caviar.
Monday, September 22, 2008
Remembering David Foster Wallace
Good People
by David Foster Wallace
They were up on a picnic table at that park by the lake, by the edge of the lake, with part of a downed tree in the shallows half hidden by the bank. Lane A. Dean, Jr., and his girlfriend, both in bluejeans and button-up shirts. They sat up on the table’s top portion and had their shoes on the bench part that people sat on to picnic or fellowship together in carefree times. They’d gone to different high schools but the same junior college, where they had met in campus ministries. It was springtime, and the park’s grass was very green and the air suffused with honeysuckle and lilacs both, which was almost too much. There were bees, and the angle of the sun made the water of the shallows look dark. There had been more storms that week, with some downed trees and the sound of chainsaws all up and down his parents’ street. Their postures on the picnic table were both the same forward kind with their shoulders rounded and elbows on their knees. In this position the girl rocked slightly and once put her face in her hands, but she was not crying. Lane was very still and immobile and looking past the bank at the downed tree in the shallows and its ball of exposed roots going all directions and the tree’s cloud of branches all half in the water. The only other individual nearby was a dozen spaced tables away, by himself, standing upright. Looking at the torn-up hole in the ground there where the tree had gone over. It was still early yet and all the shadows wheeling right and shortening. The girl wore a thin old checked cotton shirt with pearl-colored snaps with the long sleeves down and always smelled very good and clean, like someone you could trust and care about even if you weren’t in love. Lane Dean had liked the smell of her right away. His mother called her down to earth and liked her, thought she was good people, you could tell—she made this evident in little ways. The shallows lapped from different directions at the tree as if almost teething on it. Sometimes when alone and thinking or struggling to turn a matter over to Jesus Christ in prayer, he would find himself putting his fist in his palm and turning it slightly as if still playing and pounding his glove to stay sharp and alert in center. He did not do this now; it would be cruel and indecent to do this now. The older individual stood beside his picnic table—he was at it but not sitting—and looked also out of place in a suit coat or jacket and the kind of men’s hat Lane’s grandfather wore in photos as a young insurance man. He appeared to be looking across the lake. If he moved, Lane didn’t see it. He looked more like a picture than a man. There were not any ducks in view.
One thing Lane Dean did was reassure her again that he’d go with her and be there with her. It was one of the few safe or decent things he could really say. The second time he said it again now she shook her head and laughed in an unhappy way that was more just air out her nose. Her real laugh was different. Where he’d be was the waiting room, she said. That he’d be thinking about her and feeling bad for her, she knew, but he couldn’t be in there with her. This was so obviously true that he felt like a ninny that he’d kept on about it and now knew what she had thought every time he went and said it—it hadn’t brought her comfort or eased the burden at all. The worse he felt, the stiller he sat. The whole thing felt balanced on a knife or wire; if he moved to put his arm up or touch her the whole thing could tip over. He hated himself for sitting so frozen. He could almost visualize himself tiptoeing past something explosive. A big stupid-looking tiptoe, like in a cartoon. The whole last black week had been this way and it was wrong. He knew it was wrong, knew something was required of him that was not this terrible frozen care and caution, but he pretended to himself he did not know what it was that was required. He pretended it had no name. He pretended that not saying aloud what he knew to be right and true was for her sake, was for the sake of her needs and feelings. He also worked dock and routing at UPS, on top of school, but had traded to get the day off after they’d decided together. Two days before, he had awakened very early and tried to pray but could not. He was freezing more and more solid, he felt like, but he had not thought of his father or the blank frozenness of his father, even in church, which had once filled him with such pity. This was the truth. Lane Dean, Jr., felt sun on one arm as he pictured in his mind an image of himself on a train, waving mechanically to something that got smaller and smaller as the train pulled away. His father and his mother’s father had the same birthday, a Cancer. Sheri’s hair was colored an almost corn blond, very clean, the skin through her central part pink in the sunlight. They’d sat here long enough that only their right side was shaded now. He could look at her head, but not at her. Different parts of him felt unconnected to each other. She was smarter than him and they both knew it. It wasn’t just school—Lane Dean was in accounting and business and did all right; he was hanging in there. She was a year older, twenty, but it was also more—she had always seemed to Lane to be on good terms with her life in a way that age could not account for. His mother had put it that she knew what it is she wanted, which was nursing and not an easy program at Peoria Junior College, and plus she worked hostessing at the Embers and had bought her own car. She was serious in a way Lane liked. She had a cousin that died when she was thirteen, fourteen, that she’d loved and been close with. She only talked about it that once. He liked her smell and her downy arms and the way she exclaimed when something made her laugh. He had liked just being with her and talking to her. She was serious in her faith and values in a way that Lane had liked and now, sitting here with her on the table, found himself afraid of. This was an awful thing. He was starting to believe that he might not be serious in his faith. He might be somewhat of a hypocrite, like the Assyrians in Isaiah, which would be a far graver sin than the appointment—he had decided he believed this. He was desperate to be good people, to still be able to feel he was good. He rarely before now had thought of damnation and Hell—that part of it didn’t speak to his spirit—and in worship services he more just tuned himself out and tolerated Hell when it came up, the same way you tolerate the job you’ve got to have to save up for what it is you want. Her tennis shoes had little things doodled on them from sitting in her class lectures. She stayed looking down like that. Little notes or reading assignments in Bic in her neat round hand on the rubber elements around the sneaker’s rim. Lane A. Dean, looking now at her inclined head’s side’s barrettes in the shape of blue ladybugs. The appointment was for afternoon, but when the doorbell had rung so early and his mother’d called to him up the stairs, he had known, and a terrible kind of blankness had commenced falling through him.
He told her that he did not know what to do. That he knew if he was the salesman of it and forced it upon her that was awful and wrong. But he was trying to understand—they’d prayed on it and talked it through from every different angle. Lane said how sorry she knew he was, and that if he was wrong in believing they’d truly decided together when they decided to make the appointment she should please tell him, because he thought he knew how she must have felt as it got closer and closer and how she must be so scared, but that what he couldn’t tell was if it was more than that. He was totally still except for moving his mouth, it felt like. She did not reply. That if they needed to pray on it more and talk it through, then he was here, he was ready, he said. The appointment could get moved back; if she just said the word they could call and push it back to take more time to be sure in the decision. It was still so early in it—they both knew that, he said. This was true, that he felt this way, and yet he also knew he was also trying to say things that would get her to open up and say enough back that he could see her and read her heart and know what to say to get her to go through with it. He knew this without admitting to himself that this was what he wanted, for it would make him a hypocrite and liar. He knew, in some locked-up little part of him, why it was that he’d gone to no one to open up and seek their life counsel, not Pastor Steve or the prayer partners at campus ministries, not his UPS friends or the spiritual counselling available through his parents’ old church. But he did not know why Sheri herself had not gone to Pastor Steve—he could not read her heart. She was blank and hidden. He so fervently wished it never happened. He felt like he knew now why it was a true sin and not just a leftover rule from past society. He felt like he had been brought low by it and humbled and now did believe that the rules were there for a reason. That the rules were concerned with him personally, as an individual. He promised God he had learned his lesson. But what if that, too, was a hollow promise, from a hypocrite who repented only after, who promised submission but really only wanted a reprieve? He might not even know his own heart or be able to read and know himself. He kept thinking also of 1 Timothy and the hypocrite therein who disputeth over words. He felt a terrible inner resistance but could not feel what it was that it resisted. This was the truth. All the different angles and ways they had come at the decision together did not ever include it—the word—for had he once said it, avowed that he did love her, loved Sheri Fisher, then it all would have been transformed. It would not be a different stance or angle, but a difference in the very thing they were praying and deciding on together. Sometimes they had prayed together over the phone, in a kind of half code in case anybody accidentally picked up the extension. She continued to sit as if thinking, in the pose of thinking, like that one statue. They were right up next to each other on the table. He was looking over past her at the tree in the water. But he could not say he did: it was not true.
But neither did he ever open up and tell her straight out he did not love her. This might be his lie by omission. This might be the frozen resistance—were he to look right at her and tell her he didn’t, she would keep the appointment and go. He knew this. Something in him, though, some terrible weakness or lack of values, could not tell her. It felt like a muscle he did not have. He didn’t know why; he just could not do it, or even pray to do it. She believed he was good, serious in his values. Part of him seemed willing to more or less just about lie to someone with that kind of faith and trust, and what did that make him? How could such a type of individual even pray? What it really felt like was a taste of the reality of what might be meant by Hell. Lane Dean had never believed in Hell as a lake of fire or a loving God consigning folks to a burning lake of fire—he knew in his heart this was not true. What he believed in was a living God of compassion and love and the possibility of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ through whom this love was enacted in human time. But sitting here beside this girl as unknown to him now as outer space, waiting for whatever she might say to unfreeze him, now he felt like he could see the edge or outline of what a real vision of Hell might be. It was of two great and terrible armies within himself, opposed and facing each other, silent. There would be battle but no victor. Or never a battle—the armies would stay like that, motionless, looking across at each other, and seeing therein something so different and alien from themselves that they could not understand, could not hear each other’s speech as even words or read anything from what their face looked like, frozen like that, opposed and uncomprehending, for all human time. Two-hearted, a hypocrite to yourself either way.
When he moved his head, a part of the lake further out flashed with sun—the water up close wasn’t black now, and you could see into the shallows and see that all the water was moving but gently, this way and that—and in this same way he besought to return to himself as Sheri moved her leg and started to turn beside him. He could see the man in the suit and gray hat standing motionless now at the lake’s rim, holding something under one arm and looking across at the opposite side where a row of little forms on camp chairs sat in a way that meant they had lines in the water for crappie—which mostly only your blacks from the East Side ever did—and the little white shape at the row’s end a Styrofoam creel. In his moment or time at the lake now just to come, Lane Dean first felt he could take this all in whole: everything seemed distinctly lit, for the circle of the pin oak’s shade had rotated off all the way, and they sat now in sun with their shadow a two-headed thing in the grass before them. He was looking or gazing again at where the downed tree’s branches seemed to all bend so sharply just under the shallows’ surface when he was given to know that through all this frozen silence he’d despised he had, in truth, been praying, or some little part of his heart he could not hear had, for he was answered now with a type of vision, what he would later call within his own mind a vision or moment of grace. He was not a hypocrite, just broken and split off like all men. Later on, he believed that what happened was he’d had a moment of almost seeing them both as Jesus saw them—as blind but groping, wanting to please God despite their inborn fallen nature. For in that same given moment he saw, quick as light, into Sheri’s heart, and was made to know what would occur here as she finished turning to him and the man in the hat watched the fishing and the downed elm shed cells into the water. This down-to-earth girl that smelled good and wanted to be a nurse would take and hold one of his hands in both of hers to unfreeze him and make him look at her, and she would say that she cannot do it. That she is sorry she did not know this sooner, that she hadn’t meant to lie—she agreed because she’d wanted to believe that she could, but she cannot. That she will carry this and have it; she has to. With her gaze clear and steady. That all night last night she prayed and searched inside herself and decided this is what love commands of her. That Lane should please please sweetie let her finish. That listen—this is her own decision and obliges him to nothing. That she knows he does not love her, not that way, has known it all this time, and that it’s all right. That it is as it is and it’s all right. She will carry this, and have it, and love it and make no claim on Lane except his good wishes and respecting what she has to do. That she releases him, all claim, and hopes he finishes up at P.J.C. and does so good in his life and has all joy and good things. Her voice will be clear and steady, and she will be lying, for Lane has been given to read her heart. To see through her. One of the opposite side’s blacks raises his arm in what may be greeting, or waving off a bee. There is a mower cutting grass someplace off behind them. It will be a terrible, last-ditch gamble born out of the desperation in Sheri Fisher’s soul, the knowledge that she can neither do this thing today nor carry a child alone and shame her family. Her values blocked the way either way, Lane could see, and she has no other options or choice—this lie is not a sin. Galatians 4:16, Have I then become your enemy? She is gambling that he is good. There on the table, neither frozen nor yet moving, Lane Dean, Jr., sees all this, and is moved with pity, and also with something more, something without any name he knows, that is given to him in the form of a question that never once in all the long week’s thinking and division had even so much as occurred—why is he so sure he doesn’t love her? Why is one kind of love any different? What if he has no earthly idea what love is? What would even Jesus do? For it was just now he felt her two small strong soft hands on his, to turn him. What if he was just afraid, if the truth was no more than this, and if what to pray for was not even love but simple courage, to meet both her eyes as she says it and trust his heart?
This Is Water
A poem written by the Cold War Kids for David Foster Wallace
First thing you taught me
Was to keep digging inside
At my intentions
Keep asking why why why
Second thing you taught me
Was to be sincere
Not like all these smart alec sarcastics
Drowning in fear
You reminded me -
This is water! And
It feels good to swim!
After you hooked me and you reeled me up
And threw me out again
Talked like professors
You talked like policemen and whores
You became so many people
I felt like I had known them before
The third thing you taught me
Is that when I'm waiting in line
At the supermarket checkout
That my time is not worth more than your time
Your head like a lightning rod
Your heart a cocoon
We certainly won't have another like you
Anytime soon.
by David Foster Wallace
They were up on a picnic table at that park by the lake, by the edge of the lake, with part of a downed tree in the shallows half hidden by the bank. Lane A. Dean, Jr., and his girlfriend, both in bluejeans and button-up shirts. They sat up on the table’s top portion and had their shoes on the bench part that people sat on to picnic or fellowship together in carefree times. They’d gone to different high schools but the same junior college, where they had met in campus ministries. It was springtime, and the park’s grass was very green and the air suffused with honeysuckle and lilacs both, which was almost too much. There were bees, and the angle of the sun made the water of the shallows look dark. There had been more storms that week, with some downed trees and the sound of chainsaws all up and down his parents’ street. Their postures on the picnic table were both the same forward kind with their shoulders rounded and elbows on their knees. In this position the girl rocked slightly and once put her face in her hands, but she was not crying. Lane was very still and immobile and looking past the bank at the downed tree in the shallows and its ball of exposed roots going all directions and the tree’s cloud of branches all half in the water. The only other individual nearby was a dozen spaced tables away, by himself, standing upright. Looking at the torn-up hole in the ground there where the tree had gone over. It was still early yet and all the shadows wheeling right and shortening. The girl wore a thin old checked cotton shirt with pearl-colored snaps with the long sleeves down and always smelled very good and clean, like someone you could trust and care about even if you weren’t in love. Lane Dean had liked the smell of her right away. His mother called her down to earth and liked her, thought she was good people, you could tell—she made this evident in little ways. The shallows lapped from different directions at the tree as if almost teething on it. Sometimes when alone and thinking or struggling to turn a matter over to Jesus Christ in prayer, he would find himself putting his fist in his palm and turning it slightly as if still playing and pounding his glove to stay sharp and alert in center. He did not do this now; it would be cruel and indecent to do this now. The older individual stood beside his picnic table—he was at it but not sitting—and looked also out of place in a suit coat or jacket and the kind of men’s hat Lane’s grandfather wore in photos as a young insurance man. He appeared to be looking across the lake. If he moved, Lane didn’t see it. He looked more like a picture than a man. There were not any ducks in view.
One thing Lane Dean did was reassure her again that he’d go with her and be there with her. It was one of the few safe or decent things he could really say. The second time he said it again now she shook her head and laughed in an unhappy way that was more just air out her nose. Her real laugh was different. Where he’d be was the waiting room, she said. That he’d be thinking about her and feeling bad for her, she knew, but he couldn’t be in there with her. This was so obviously true that he felt like a ninny that he’d kept on about it and now knew what she had thought every time he went and said it—it hadn’t brought her comfort or eased the burden at all. The worse he felt, the stiller he sat. The whole thing felt balanced on a knife or wire; if he moved to put his arm up or touch her the whole thing could tip over. He hated himself for sitting so frozen. He could almost visualize himself tiptoeing past something explosive. A big stupid-looking tiptoe, like in a cartoon. The whole last black week had been this way and it was wrong. He knew it was wrong, knew something was required of him that was not this terrible frozen care and caution, but he pretended to himself he did not know what it was that was required. He pretended it had no name. He pretended that not saying aloud what he knew to be right and true was for her sake, was for the sake of her needs and feelings. He also worked dock and routing at UPS, on top of school, but had traded to get the day off after they’d decided together. Two days before, he had awakened very early and tried to pray but could not. He was freezing more and more solid, he felt like, but he had not thought of his father or the blank frozenness of his father, even in church, which had once filled him with such pity. This was the truth. Lane Dean, Jr., felt sun on one arm as he pictured in his mind an image of himself on a train, waving mechanically to something that got smaller and smaller as the train pulled away. His father and his mother’s father had the same birthday, a Cancer. Sheri’s hair was colored an almost corn blond, very clean, the skin through her central part pink in the sunlight. They’d sat here long enough that only their right side was shaded now. He could look at her head, but not at her. Different parts of him felt unconnected to each other. She was smarter than him and they both knew it. It wasn’t just school—Lane Dean was in accounting and business and did all right; he was hanging in there. She was a year older, twenty, but it was also more—she had always seemed to Lane to be on good terms with her life in a way that age could not account for. His mother had put it that she knew what it is she wanted, which was nursing and not an easy program at Peoria Junior College, and plus she worked hostessing at the Embers and had bought her own car. She was serious in a way Lane liked. She had a cousin that died when she was thirteen, fourteen, that she’d loved and been close with. She only talked about it that once. He liked her smell and her downy arms and the way she exclaimed when something made her laugh. He had liked just being with her and talking to her. She was serious in her faith and values in a way that Lane had liked and now, sitting here with her on the table, found himself afraid of. This was an awful thing. He was starting to believe that he might not be serious in his faith. He might be somewhat of a hypocrite, like the Assyrians in Isaiah, which would be a far graver sin than the appointment—he had decided he believed this. He was desperate to be good people, to still be able to feel he was good. He rarely before now had thought of damnation and Hell—that part of it didn’t speak to his spirit—and in worship services he more just tuned himself out and tolerated Hell when it came up, the same way you tolerate the job you’ve got to have to save up for what it is you want. Her tennis shoes had little things doodled on them from sitting in her class lectures. She stayed looking down like that. Little notes or reading assignments in Bic in her neat round hand on the rubber elements around the sneaker’s rim. Lane A. Dean, looking now at her inclined head’s side’s barrettes in the shape of blue ladybugs. The appointment was for afternoon, but when the doorbell had rung so early and his mother’d called to him up the stairs, he had known, and a terrible kind of blankness had commenced falling through him.
He told her that he did not know what to do. That he knew if he was the salesman of it and forced it upon her that was awful and wrong. But he was trying to understand—they’d prayed on it and talked it through from every different angle. Lane said how sorry she knew he was, and that if he was wrong in believing they’d truly decided together when they decided to make the appointment she should please tell him, because he thought he knew how she must have felt as it got closer and closer and how she must be so scared, but that what he couldn’t tell was if it was more than that. He was totally still except for moving his mouth, it felt like. She did not reply. That if they needed to pray on it more and talk it through, then he was here, he was ready, he said. The appointment could get moved back; if she just said the word they could call and push it back to take more time to be sure in the decision. It was still so early in it—they both knew that, he said. This was true, that he felt this way, and yet he also knew he was also trying to say things that would get her to open up and say enough back that he could see her and read her heart and know what to say to get her to go through with it. He knew this without admitting to himself that this was what he wanted, for it would make him a hypocrite and liar. He knew, in some locked-up little part of him, why it was that he’d gone to no one to open up and seek their life counsel, not Pastor Steve or the prayer partners at campus ministries, not his UPS friends or the spiritual counselling available through his parents’ old church. But he did not know why Sheri herself had not gone to Pastor Steve—he could not read her heart. She was blank and hidden. He so fervently wished it never happened. He felt like he knew now why it was a true sin and not just a leftover rule from past society. He felt like he had been brought low by it and humbled and now did believe that the rules were there for a reason. That the rules were concerned with him personally, as an individual. He promised God he had learned his lesson. But what if that, too, was a hollow promise, from a hypocrite who repented only after, who promised submission but really only wanted a reprieve? He might not even know his own heart or be able to read and know himself. He kept thinking also of 1 Timothy and the hypocrite therein who disputeth over words. He felt a terrible inner resistance but could not feel what it was that it resisted. This was the truth. All the different angles and ways they had come at the decision together did not ever include it—the word—for had he once said it, avowed that he did love her, loved Sheri Fisher, then it all would have been transformed. It would not be a different stance or angle, but a difference in the very thing they were praying and deciding on together. Sometimes they had prayed together over the phone, in a kind of half code in case anybody accidentally picked up the extension. She continued to sit as if thinking, in the pose of thinking, like that one statue. They were right up next to each other on the table. He was looking over past her at the tree in the water. But he could not say he did: it was not true.
But neither did he ever open up and tell her straight out he did not love her. This might be his lie by omission. This might be the frozen resistance—were he to look right at her and tell her he didn’t, she would keep the appointment and go. He knew this. Something in him, though, some terrible weakness or lack of values, could not tell her. It felt like a muscle he did not have. He didn’t know why; he just could not do it, or even pray to do it. She believed he was good, serious in his values. Part of him seemed willing to more or less just about lie to someone with that kind of faith and trust, and what did that make him? How could such a type of individual even pray? What it really felt like was a taste of the reality of what might be meant by Hell. Lane Dean had never believed in Hell as a lake of fire or a loving God consigning folks to a burning lake of fire—he knew in his heart this was not true. What he believed in was a living God of compassion and love and the possibility of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ through whom this love was enacted in human time. But sitting here beside this girl as unknown to him now as outer space, waiting for whatever she might say to unfreeze him, now he felt like he could see the edge or outline of what a real vision of Hell might be. It was of two great and terrible armies within himself, opposed and facing each other, silent. There would be battle but no victor. Or never a battle—the armies would stay like that, motionless, looking across at each other, and seeing therein something so different and alien from themselves that they could not understand, could not hear each other’s speech as even words or read anything from what their face looked like, frozen like that, opposed and uncomprehending, for all human time. Two-hearted, a hypocrite to yourself either way.
When he moved his head, a part of the lake further out flashed with sun—the water up close wasn’t black now, and you could see into the shallows and see that all the water was moving but gently, this way and that—and in this same way he besought to return to himself as Sheri moved her leg and started to turn beside him. He could see the man in the suit and gray hat standing motionless now at the lake’s rim, holding something under one arm and looking across at the opposite side where a row of little forms on camp chairs sat in a way that meant they had lines in the water for crappie—which mostly only your blacks from the East Side ever did—and the little white shape at the row’s end a Styrofoam creel. In his moment or time at the lake now just to come, Lane Dean first felt he could take this all in whole: everything seemed distinctly lit, for the circle of the pin oak’s shade had rotated off all the way, and they sat now in sun with their shadow a two-headed thing in the grass before them. He was looking or gazing again at where the downed tree’s branches seemed to all bend so sharply just under the shallows’ surface when he was given to know that through all this frozen silence he’d despised he had, in truth, been praying, or some little part of his heart he could not hear had, for he was answered now with a type of vision, what he would later call within his own mind a vision or moment of grace. He was not a hypocrite, just broken and split off like all men. Later on, he believed that what happened was he’d had a moment of almost seeing them both as Jesus saw them—as blind but groping, wanting to please God despite their inborn fallen nature. For in that same given moment he saw, quick as light, into Sheri’s heart, and was made to know what would occur here as she finished turning to him and the man in the hat watched the fishing and the downed elm shed cells into the water. This down-to-earth girl that smelled good and wanted to be a nurse would take and hold one of his hands in both of hers to unfreeze him and make him look at her, and she would say that she cannot do it. That she is sorry she did not know this sooner, that she hadn’t meant to lie—she agreed because she’d wanted to believe that she could, but she cannot. That she will carry this and have it; she has to. With her gaze clear and steady. That all night last night she prayed and searched inside herself and decided this is what love commands of her. That Lane should please please sweetie let her finish. That listen—this is her own decision and obliges him to nothing. That she knows he does not love her, not that way, has known it all this time, and that it’s all right. That it is as it is and it’s all right. She will carry this, and have it, and love it and make no claim on Lane except his good wishes and respecting what she has to do. That she releases him, all claim, and hopes he finishes up at P.J.C. and does so good in his life and has all joy and good things. Her voice will be clear and steady, and she will be lying, for Lane has been given to read her heart. To see through her. One of the opposite side’s blacks raises his arm in what may be greeting, or waving off a bee. There is a mower cutting grass someplace off behind them. It will be a terrible, last-ditch gamble born out of the desperation in Sheri Fisher’s soul, the knowledge that she can neither do this thing today nor carry a child alone and shame her family. Her values blocked the way either way, Lane could see, and she has no other options or choice—this lie is not a sin. Galatians 4:16, Have I then become your enemy? She is gambling that he is good. There on the table, neither frozen nor yet moving, Lane Dean, Jr., sees all this, and is moved with pity, and also with something more, something without any name he knows, that is given to him in the form of a question that never once in all the long week’s thinking and division had even so much as occurred—why is he so sure he doesn’t love her? Why is one kind of love any different? What if he has no earthly idea what love is? What would even Jesus do? For it was just now he felt her two small strong soft hands on his, to turn him. What if he was just afraid, if the truth was no more than this, and if what to pray for was not even love but simple courage, to meet both her eyes as she says it and trust his heart?
This Is Water
A poem written by the Cold War Kids for David Foster Wallace
First thing you taught me
Was to keep digging inside
At my intentions
Keep asking why why why
Second thing you taught me
Was to be sincere
Not like all these smart alec sarcastics
Drowning in fear
You reminded me -
This is water! And
It feels good to swim!
After you hooked me and you reeled me up
And threw me out again
Talked like professors
You talked like policemen and whores
You became so many people
I felt like I had known them before
The third thing you taught me
Is that when I'm waiting in line
At the supermarket checkout
That my time is not worth more than your time
Your head like a lightning rod
Your heart a cocoon
We certainly won't have another like you
Anytime soon.
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Drinking Makes Me Miss You (and drunk)
Finished.
Red memories from the bottle
and
softened packets of cigarettes'
butt-stained holes,
like the punctuation
of 'The Road'.
Pinot soaked love;
I miss you.
It's Just,
I think I've had too much.
Red memories from the bottle
and
softened packets of cigarettes'
butt-stained holes,
like the punctuation
of 'The Road'.
Pinot soaked love;
I miss you.
It's Just,
I think I've had too much.
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Do You Love Me?- Peter Carey
1.The Role of the Cartographers
Perhaps a few words about the role of the Cartographers in our present society are warranted.
To begin with one must understand the nature of the yearly census, a manifestation of our desire to know, always, exactly where we stand. The census, originally a count of the population, has gradually extended until it has become a total inventory of the contents of the nation, a mammoth task which is continuing all the time- no sooner has one census been announced than work on another begins.
The results of the census play an important part in our national life and have, for many years, been the pivot point for the yearly ‘Festival of the Corn’ (an ancient festival, related to the wealth of the earth).
We have passion for lists. And nowhere is this more clearly illustrated than in the Festival of the Corn which takes place in midsummer, the weather always being fine and warm. On the night of the festival, the householders move their goods and possessions, all furniture, electrical goods, clothing, rugs, kitchen utensils, bathrobes, slippers, cushions, lawn mowers, curtains, doorstops, heirlooms, cameras, and anything else that can be moved into the street so that the census officials may the more easily check the inventory of each household.
The Festival of the Corn is, however, much more than a clerical affair. And, the day over and the night come, the householders invite each other to view their possessions which they refer to, on this night, as gifts. It is like nothing more than a wedding feast- there is much cooking, all sorts of traditional dishes, fine wines, strong liquors, music is played loudly in quiet neighbourhoods, strangers copulate with strangers, men dance together, and maidens in yellow robes distribute small barley-sugar corncobs to young and old alike.
And in all this the role of the Cartographers is perhaps the most important, for our people crave, more than anything else, to know the extent of the nation, to know, exactly, the shape of the coastline, to hear what land may have been lost to the sea, to know what has been reclaimed and what is still in doubt. If the Cartographers’ report is good the Festival of the Corn will be a good festival. If the report is bad, one can always sense, for all the dancing and drinking, a feeling of nervousness and apprehension in the revellers, a certain desperation. In the year of a bad Cartographers’ report there will always be fights and, occasionally, some property will be stolen as citizens attempt to compensate themselves for their sense of loss.
Because of the importance of their job the Cartographers have become an elite- well paid, admired, envied, and having no small opinion of themselves. It is said by some that they are overproud, immoral, vain and footloose, and it is perhaps the last charge (by necessity true) that brings about the others. For the Cartographers spend their years traveling up and down the coast, along the great rivers, traversing great mountains and vast deserts. They travel in small parties of three, four, sometimes five, making their own time, working as they please, because eventually it is their own responsibility to see that their team’s task is completed in time.
My father, a Cartographer himself, often told me stories about himself or his colleagues and the adventures they had in the wilderness.
There were other stories, however, that always remained in my mind and, as a child, caused me considerable anxiety. These were the stories of the nether regions and I doubt if they were known outside a very small circle of Cartographers and government officials. As a child in a house frequented by Cartographers, I often heard these tales which invariably made me cling closely to my mother’s skirts.
It appears that for some time certain regions of the country had become less and less real and these regions were regarded fearfully even by the Cartographers, who prided themselves on their courage. The regions in questions were invariably uninhabited, unused for agriculture or industry. There were certain sections of the Halverson Ranges, vast stretches of the Greater Desert, and long pieces of coastline which had begun to slowly disappear like the image on an improperly fixed photograph.
It was because of these nebulous areas that the Fischerscope was introduced. The Fischerscope is not unlike radar in its principle and is able to detect the presence of any object, no matter how dematerialized or insubstantial. In this way the Cartographers were still about the map the questionable pairs of the nether regions. To have returned with blanks on the maps would have created such public anxiety that no one dared think what it might do to the stability of our society. I now have reason to believe that certain areas of the country disappeared so completely that even the Fischerscope could not detect them and the Cartographers acting under political pressure, used old maps to fake in the missing sections. If my theory is grounded in fact, and I am sure it is, it would explain my father’s cynicism about the Festival of the Corn.
2.The Archetypal Cartographer
My father was in his fifties but he had kept himself in good shape. His skin was brown and his muscles still firm. He was a tall man with a thick head of grey hair, a slightly less grey moustache and a long aquiline nose. Sitting on a horse he looked as proud and cruel as Genghis Khan. Lying on the beach clad only in bathers and sunglasses he still managed to retain his authoritative air.
Beside him I always felt as if I had betrayed him. I was slightly built, more like my mother.
It was the day before the festival and we lay in the beach, my father, my mother, my girlfriend and I. As was usual in these circumstances my father addressed all his remarks to Karen. He never considered the members of his own family worth talking to. I always had the uncomfortable feeling that he was flirting with my girlfriends and I never knew what to do about it.
People were lying in groups up and down the beach. Near us a family of five were playing with a large beach ball.
“Look at those fools,” my father said to Karen.
“Why are they fools?” Karen asked.
“They’re fools,” said my father. “They were born fools and they’ll die fools. Tomorrow they’ll dance in the streets and drink too much.”
“So,” said Karen triumphantly, in the manner of one who has become privy to secret information. “ It will be a good Cartographers’ report?”
My father roared with laughter.
Karen looked hurt and pouted. “Am I a fool?”
“No,” my father said, “you’re really quite splendid.”
3.The Most Famous Festival
The festival, as it turned out, was the greatest disaster in living memory.
The Cartographers’ report was excellent, the weather was fine, but somewhere something had gone wrong.
The news was confusing. The television said that, in spite of a good report, various items had been stolen very early in the night. Later there was a news flash to say that a large house had completely disappeared in Howie Street.
Later still we looked out the window to see a huge band of people carrying lighted torches. There was a lot of shouting. The same image, exactly, was on the television and a reporter was explaining that bands of vigilantes were out looking for thieves.
My father stood at the window, a martini in his hand, and watched the vigilantes set alight a house opposite.
My mother wanted to know what we should do.
“Come watch the fools,” my father said, “they’re incredible.”
4.The I.C.I Incident
The next day the I.C.I building disappeared in front of a crowd of two thousand people. It took two hours. The crowd stood silently as the great steel and glass structure slowly faded before them.
The staff who were evacuated looked pale and shaken.
The caretaker who was amongst the last to leave looked almost translucent. In the days that followed he made some name for himself as a mystic, claiming that he had been able to see other words, layer upon layer, through the fabric of the here and now.
5.Behaviour when Confronted with Dematerialization
The anger of our people when confronted with acts of theft has always been legendary and was certainly highlighted by the incidents which occurred on the night of the festival.
But the fury exhibited on this famous night could not compare with the intensity of emotion displayed by those who witnessed the earliest scenes of dematerialization.
The silent crowd who watched the I.C.I building erupted into hysteria when they realized that it had finally gone and wasn’t likely to come back.
It was like some monstrous theft for which punishment must be meted out.
They stormed into the Shell building next door and smashed desks and ripped down office partitions. Reporters who attended the scene were rarely impartial observers, but one of the cooler-headed members of the press remarked on the great number of weeping men and women who hurled typewriters and scattered files through crowds of frightened office workers.
Five days later they displayed similar anger when the Shell building itself disappeared.
6.Behaviour of Those Dematerializing
The first reports of dematerializing people were not generally believed and were suppressed by the media. But these things were soon common knowledge and few families were untouched by them. Such incidents were obviously not all the same but in many victims there was a tendency to exhibit extreme aggression towards those around them. Murders and assaults committed by these unfortunates were not uncommon and in most cases they exhibited an almost unbelievable rage, as if they were the victims of a shocking betrayal.
My friend James Bray was once stopped in the street by a very beautiful woman who clawed and scratched at his face and said: “You did this to me, you bastard, you did this to me.”
He had never seen her before but he confessed that, in some irrational way, he felt responsible and didn’t defend himself. Fortunately she disappeared before she could do him much damage.
7.Some Theories that Arose at the Time
The world is merely a dream dreamt by god who is waking after a long sleep. When he is properly awake the world will disappear completely. When the world disappears we will disappear with it and be happy.
The world has become sensitive to light. In the same way that prolonged use of, say, penicillin can suddenly result in a dangerous allergy, prolonged exposure of the world to the sun has made it sensitive to light.
The advocates of this theory could be seen bustling through the city crowds in their long, hooded black robes.
The fact that the world is disappearing has been caused by the sloppy work of the Cartographers and census takers. Those who filled out their census incorrectly would lose those items they ad neglected to describe. People overlooked in the census by impatient officials would also disappear. A strong pressure group demanded that a new census be taken quickly before matters got worse.
8. My Father’s Theory
The world, according to my father, was exactly like the human body and had its own defence mechanisms with which it defended itself against anything that either threatened it or was unnecessary to it. The I.C.I building and the I.C.I company had obviously constituted some threat to the world or had simply been irrelevant. That’s why it had disappeared and not because some damn fool god was waking up and rubbing his eyes.
“I don’t believe in god,” my father said. “Humanity is god. Humanity is the only god I know. If humanity doesn’t need something it will disappear. People who are not loved will disappear. Everything that is not loved will disappear from the face of the earth. We only exist through the love of others and that’s what it’s all about.”
9.A Contradiction
“Look at those fools,” my father said, “they wouldn’t know if they were up themselves.”
10.A Unpleasant Scene
The world at this time was full of unpleasant and disturbing scenes. One that I recall vividly took place in the middle of the city on a hot, sultry Tuesday afternoon. It was about one-thirty and I was waiting for Karen by the post office when a man of forty or so ran past me. He was dematerializing rapidly. Everybody seemed to be deliberately looking the other way, which seemed to me to make him dematerialize faster. I stared at him hard, hoping that I could do something to keep him there until help arrived. I tried to love him, because I believed my father’s theory. I thought, I must love that man. But his face irritated me. It is not so easy to love a stranger and I’m ashamed to say that he had the small mouth and close-together eyes that I have always disliked in a person. I tried to love him but I’m afraid I failed.
While I watched he tried to hail taxi after taxi. But the taxi drivers were only too aware of what was happening and had no wish to spend their tie driving a passenger who, at any moment, might cease to exist. They looked the other way or put up their NOT FOR HIRE signs.
Finally he managed to waylay a taxi at some traffic lights. By this time he was so insubstantial that I could see right through him. He was beginning to shout. A terrible thin noise, but penetrating nonetheless. He tried to open the cab door, but the driver has already locked it. I could hear the man’s voice, high and piercing: “I want to go home.” He repeated it over and over again. “I want to go home to my wife.”
The taxi drove off when the lights changed. There was a lull in the traffic. People had fled the corner and left it deserted and it was I alone who saw the man finally disappear.
I felt sick.
Karen arrived five minutes later and found me pale and shaken. “Are you all right?” she said.
“Do you love me?” I said.
11. The Nether Regions
My father had an irritating way of explaining things to me I already understood, refusing to stop no matter how much I said “I know” or “You told me before.”
Thus he expounded on the significance of the nether regions, adopting the tone of a lecturer speaking to a class of particularly backward children.
“As you know,” he said, “the nether regions were amongst the first to disappear and this in itself is significant. These regions, I’m sure you know, are seldom visited by men and only then by people like me whose sole job it is to make sure that they’re still there. We had no use for these areas, these deserts, swamps, and coastlines which is why, of course, they disappeared. They were merely possessions of ours and if they had any use at all it was as symbols for our poets, writers and film makers. They were used as symbols of alienation, lovelessness, loneliness, uselessness and so on. Do you get what I mean?”
“Yes,” I said, “I get what you mean.”
“But do you?” my father insisted. “But do you really, I wonder.” He examined me seriously, musing on the possibilities of my understanding him. “How old are you?”
“Twenty,” I said.
“I knew, of course,” he said. “Do you understand the significance of the nether regions?”
I sighed, a little too loudly, and my father narrowed his eyes. Quickly I said: “They are like everything else. They’re like the cities. The cities are deserts where people are alone and lonely. They don’t love one another.”
“Don’t love one another,” intoned my father, also sighing. “We no longer love one another. When we realize that we need one another we will stop disappearing. This is a lesson to us. A hard lesson, but, I hope, an effective one.”
My father continued to speak, but I watched him without listening. After a few minutes he stopped abruptly: “Are you listening to me?” he said. I was surprised to detect real concern in his voice. He looked at me questioningly. “I’ve always looked after you,” he said, “ever since you were little.”
12. The Cartographers’ Fall
I don’t know when it was that I noticed that my father had become depressed. It probably happened quite gradually without my mother or me noticing it.
Even when I did become aware of it I attributed it to a woman. My father had a number of lovers and his moods usually reflected the success or failure of these relationships.
But I know now that he had heard already of Hurst and Jamov, the first two Cartographers to disappear. The news was suppressed for several weeks and then, somehow or other, leaked to the press. Certainly the Cartographers had enemies amongst the civil servants who regarded them as overproud and overpaid, and it was probably from one of these civil servants that the press heard the news.
When the news finally broke I understood my father’s depression and felt sorry for him.
I didn’t know who to help him. I wanted, badly, to make him happy. I had never ever been able to give him anything or do anything for him that he couldn’t do better himself. Now I wanted to help him, to show him I understood.
I found him sitting in front of the television one night when I returned from my office and I sat quietly beside him. He seemed more kindly now and he placed his hand on my knee and patted it.
I sat there for a while, overcome with the new warmth of this relationship, and then, unable to contain my emotion any more, I blurted out: “You could change your job.”
My father stiffened and sat bolt upright. The pressure of his hand on my knee increased until I yelped with pain, and still he held on, hurting me terribly.
“You are a fool,” he said, “you wouldn’t know if you were up yourself.”
Through the pain in my leg, I felt the intensity of my father’s fear.
13.Why the World Needs Cartographers
My father woke me at 3.00 a.m. to tell me why the world needed Cartographers. He smelled of whisky and seemed, once again, to be very gentle.
“The world needs Cartographers,” he said softly, “because if they didn’t have Cartographers the fools wouldn’t know where they were. They wouldn’t know if they were up themselves if they didn’t have a Cartographer to tell them what’s happening. The world needs Cartographers,” my father said, “it fucking well needs Cartographers.”
14.One Final Scene
Let me describe a final scene to you: I am sitting on the sofa my father brought home when I was five years old. I am watching television. My father is sitting in a leather armchair that once belonged to his father and which has always been exclusively his. My mother is sitting in the dining alcove with her cards spread across the table, playing one more interminable game of patience.
I glance casually across at my father to see if he is doing anything more than stare into space, and notice, with a terrible shock, that he was showing the first signs of dematerializing.
“What are you staring at?” My father, in fact, has been staring at me.
“Nothing.”
“Well, don’t.”
Nervously I return my eyes to the inanity of the television. I don’t know what to do. Should I tell my father that he is dematerializing? If I don’t tell him will he notice? I feel I should do something but I can feel, already, the anger in his voice. His anger is nothing new. But this is possibly the beginning of a tide of uncontrollable rage. If he knows he is dematerializing, he will think I don’t love him. He will blame me. He will attack me. Old as he is, he is still considerably stronger than I am and he could hurt me badly. I stare determinedly at the television and feel my father’s eyes on me.
I try to love my father, I try very, very hard.
I attempt to remember how I felt about him when I was little, in the days when he was still occasionally tender towards me.
But it’s no good.
Because I can only remember how he has hit me, hurt me, humiliated me and flirted with my girlfriends. I realize, with a flush of panic and guilt, that I don’t love him. In spite of which I say: “I love you.”
My mother looks up sharply from her cards and lets out a surprised cry.
I turn to my father. He has almost disappeared. I can see the leather of the chair through his stomach.
I don’t know whether it is my unconvincing declaration of love or my mother’s exclamation that makes my father laugh. For whatever reason, he begins to laugh uncontrollably: “You bloody fools,” he gasps, “I wish you could see the looks on your bloody silly faces.”
And he is gone.
My mother looks across at me nervously, a card still in her hand. “Do you love me?” she asks.
Perhaps a few words about the role of the Cartographers in our present society are warranted.
To begin with one must understand the nature of the yearly census, a manifestation of our desire to know, always, exactly where we stand. The census, originally a count of the population, has gradually extended until it has become a total inventory of the contents of the nation, a mammoth task which is continuing all the time- no sooner has one census been announced than work on another begins.
The results of the census play an important part in our national life and have, for many years, been the pivot point for the yearly ‘Festival of the Corn’ (an ancient festival, related to the wealth of the earth).
We have passion for lists. And nowhere is this more clearly illustrated than in the Festival of the Corn which takes place in midsummer, the weather always being fine and warm. On the night of the festival, the householders move their goods and possessions, all furniture, electrical goods, clothing, rugs, kitchen utensils, bathrobes, slippers, cushions, lawn mowers, curtains, doorstops, heirlooms, cameras, and anything else that can be moved into the street so that the census officials may the more easily check the inventory of each household.
The Festival of the Corn is, however, much more than a clerical affair. And, the day over and the night come, the householders invite each other to view their possessions which they refer to, on this night, as gifts. It is like nothing more than a wedding feast- there is much cooking, all sorts of traditional dishes, fine wines, strong liquors, music is played loudly in quiet neighbourhoods, strangers copulate with strangers, men dance together, and maidens in yellow robes distribute small barley-sugar corncobs to young and old alike.
And in all this the role of the Cartographers is perhaps the most important, for our people crave, more than anything else, to know the extent of the nation, to know, exactly, the shape of the coastline, to hear what land may have been lost to the sea, to know what has been reclaimed and what is still in doubt. If the Cartographers’ report is good the Festival of the Corn will be a good festival. If the report is bad, one can always sense, for all the dancing and drinking, a feeling of nervousness and apprehension in the revellers, a certain desperation. In the year of a bad Cartographers’ report there will always be fights and, occasionally, some property will be stolen as citizens attempt to compensate themselves for their sense of loss.
Because of the importance of their job the Cartographers have become an elite- well paid, admired, envied, and having no small opinion of themselves. It is said by some that they are overproud, immoral, vain and footloose, and it is perhaps the last charge (by necessity true) that brings about the others. For the Cartographers spend their years traveling up and down the coast, along the great rivers, traversing great mountains and vast deserts. They travel in small parties of three, four, sometimes five, making their own time, working as they please, because eventually it is their own responsibility to see that their team’s task is completed in time.
My father, a Cartographer himself, often told me stories about himself or his colleagues and the adventures they had in the wilderness.
There were other stories, however, that always remained in my mind and, as a child, caused me considerable anxiety. These were the stories of the nether regions and I doubt if they were known outside a very small circle of Cartographers and government officials. As a child in a house frequented by Cartographers, I often heard these tales which invariably made me cling closely to my mother’s skirts.
It appears that for some time certain regions of the country had become less and less real and these regions were regarded fearfully even by the Cartographers, who prided themselves on their courage. The regions in questions were invariably uninhabited, unused for agriculture or industry. There were certain sections of the Halverson Ranges, vast stretches of the Greater Desert, and long pieces of coastline which had begun to slowly disappear like the image on an improperly fixed photograph.
It was because of these nebulous areas that the Fischerscope was introduced. The Fischerscope is not unlike radar in its principle and is able to detect the presence of any object, no matter how dematerialized or insubstantial. In this way the Cartographers were still about the map the questionable pairs of the nether regions. To have returned with blanks on the maps would have created such public anxiety that no one dared think what it might do to the stability of our society. I now have reason to believe that certain areas of the country disappeared so completely that even the Fischerscope could not detect them and the Cartographers acting under political pressure, used old maps to fake in the missing sections. If my theory is grounded in fact, and I am sure it is, it would explain my father’s cynicism about the Festival of the Corn.
2.The Archetypal Cartographer
My father was in his fifties but he had kept himself in good shape. His skin was brown and his muscles still firm. He was a tall man with a thick head of grey hair, a slightly less grey moustache and a long aquiline nose. Sitting on a horse he looked as proud and cruel as Genghis Khan. Lying on the beach clad only in bathers and sunglasses he still managed to retain his authoritative air.
Beside him I always felt as if I had betrayed him. I was slightly built, more like my mother.
It was the day before the festival and we lay in the beach, my father, my mother, my girlfriend and I. As was usual in these circumstances my father addressed all his remarks to Karen. He never considered the members of his own family worth talking to. I always had the uncomfortable feeling that he was flirting with my girlfriends and I never knew what to do about it.
People were lying in groups up and down the beach. Near us a family of five were playing with a large beach ball.
“Look at those fools,” my father said to Karen.
“Why are they fools?” Karen asked.
“They’re fools,” said my father. “They were born fools and they’ll die fools. Tomorrow they’ll dance in the streets and drink too much.”
“So,” said Karen triumphantly, in the manner of one who has become privy to secret information. “ It will be a good Cartographers’ report?”
My father roared with laughter.
Karen looked hurt and pouted. “Am I a fool?”
“No,” my father said, “you’re really quite splendid.”
3.The Most Famous Festival
The festival, as it turned out, was the greatest disaster in living memory.
The Cartographers’ report was excellent, the weather was fine, but somewhere something had gone wrong.
The news was confusing. The television said that, in spite of a good report, various items had been stolen very early in the night. Later there was a news flash to say that a large house had completely disappeared in Howie Street.
Later still we looked out the window to see a huge band of people carrying lighted torches. There was a lot of shouting. The same image, exactly, was on the television and a reporter was explaining that bands of vigilantes were out looking for thieves.
My father stood at the window, a martini in his hand, and watched the vigilantes set alight a house opposite.
My mother wanted to know what we should do.
“Come watch the fools,” my father said, “they’re incredible.”
4.The I.C.I Incident
The next day the I.C.I building disappeared in front of a crowd of two thousand people. It took two hours. The crowd stood silently as the great steel and glass structure slowly faded before them.
The staff who were evacuated looked pale and shaken.
The caretaker who was amongst the last to leave looked almost translucent. In the days that followed he made some name for himself as a mystic, claiming that he had been able to see other words, layer upon layer, through the fabric of the here and now.
5.Behaviour when Confronted with Dematerialization
The anger of our people when confronted with acts of theft has always been legendary and was certainly highlighted by the incidents which occurred on the night of the festival.
But the fury exhibited on this famous night could not compare with the intensity of emotion displayed by those who witnessed the earliest scenes of dematerialization.
The silent crowd who watched the I.C.I building erupted into hysteria when they realized that it had finally gone and wasn’t likely to come back.
It was like some monstrous theft for which punishment must be meted out.
They stormed into the Shell building next door and smashed desks and ripped down office partitions. Reporters who attended the scene were rarely impartial observers, but one of the cooler-headed members of the press remarked on the great number of weeping men and women who hurled typewriters and scattered files through crowds of frightened office workers.
Five days later they displayed similar anger when the Shell building itself disappeared.
6.Behaviour of Those Dematerializing
The first reports of dematerializing people were not generally believed and were suppressed by the media. But these things were soon common knowledge and few families were untouched by them. Such incidents were obviously not all the same but in many victims there was a tendency to exhibit extreme aggression towards those around them. Murders and assaults committed by these unfortunates were not uncommon and in most cases they exhibited an almost unbelievable rage, as if they were the victims of a shocking betrayal.
My friend James Bray was once stopped in the street by a very beautiful woman who clawed and scratched at his face and said: “You did this to me, you bastard, you did this to me.”
He had never seen her before but he confessed that, in some irrational way, he felt responsible and didn’t defend himself. Fortunately she disappeared before she could do him much damage.
7.Some Theories that Arose at the Time
The world is merely a dream dreamt by god who is waking after a long sleep. When he is properly awake the world will disappear completely. When the world disappears we will disappear with it and be happy.
The world has become sensitive to light. In the same way that prolonged use of, say, penicillin can suddenly result in a dangerous allergy, prolonged exposure of the world to the sun has made it sensitive to light.
The advocates of this theory could be seen bustling through the city crowds in their long, hooded black robes.
The fact that the world is disappearing has been caused by the sloppy work of the Cartographers and census takers. Those who filled out their census incorrectly would lose those items they ad neglected to describe. People overlooked in the census by impatient officials would also disappear. A strong pressure group demanded that a new census be taken quickly before matters got worse.
8. My Father’s Theory
The world, according to my father, was exactly like the human body and had its own defence mechanisms with which it defended itself against anything that either threatened it or was unnecessary to it. The I.C.I building and the I.C.I company had obviously constituted some threat to the world or had simply been irrelevant. That’s why it had disappeared and not because some damn fool god was waking up and rubbing his eyes.
“I don’t believe in god,” my father said. “Humanity is god. Humanity is the only god I know. If humanity doesn’t need something it will disappear. People who are not loved will disappear. Everything that is not loved will disappear from the face of the earth. We only exist through the love of others and that’s what it’s all about.”
9.A Contradiction
“Look at those fools,” my father said, “they wouldn’t know if they were up themselves.”
10.A Unpleasant Scene
The world at this time was full of unpleasant and disturbing scenes. One that I recall vividly took place in the middle of the city on a hot, sultry Tuesday afternoon. It was about one-thirty and I was waiting for Karen by the post office when a man of forty or so ran past me. He was dematerializing rapidly. Everybody seemed to be deliberately looking the other way, which seemed to me to make him dematerialize faster. I stared at him hard, hoping that I could do something to keep him there until help arrived. I tried to love him, because I believed my father’s theory. I thought, I must love that man. But his face irritated me. It is not so easy to love a stranger and I’m ashamed to say that he had the small mouth and close-together eyes that I have always disliked in a person. I tried to love him but I’m afraid I failed.
While I watched he tried to hail taxi after taxi. But the taxi drivers were only too aware of what was happening and had no wish to spend their tie driving a passenger who, at any moment, might cease to exist. They looked the other way or put up their NOT FOR HIRE signs.
Finally he managed to waylay a taxi at some traffic lights. By this time he was so insubstantial that I could see right through him. He was beginning to shout. A terrible thin noise, but penetrating nonetheless. He tried to open the cab door, but the driver has already locked it. I could hear the man’s voice, high and piercing: “I want to go home.” He repeated it over and over again. “I want to go home to my wife.”
The taxi drove off when the lights changed. There was a lull in the traffic. People had fled the corner and left it deserted and it was I alone who saw the man finally disappear.
I felt sick.
Karen arrived five minutes later and found me pale and shaken. “Are you all right?” she said.
“Do you love me?” I said.
11. The Nether Regions
My father had an irritating way of explaining things to me I already understood, refusing to stop no matter how much I said “I know” or “You told me before.”
Thus he expounded on the significance of the nether regions, adopting the tone of a lecturer speaking to a class of particularly backward children.
“As you know,” he said, “the nether regions were amongst the first to disappear and this in itself is significant. These regions, I’m sure you know, are seldom visited by men and only then by people like me whose sole job it is to make sure that they’re still there. We had no use for these areas, these deserts, swamps, and coastlines which is why, of course, they disappeared. They were merely possessions of ours and if they had any use at all it was as symbols for our poets, writers and film makers. They were used as symbols of alienation, lovelessness, loneliness, uselessness and so on. Do you get what I mean?”
“Yes,” I said, “I get what you mean.”
“But do you?” my father insisted. “But do you really, I wonder.” He examined me seriously, musing on the possibilities of my understanding him. “How old are you?”
“Twenty,” I said.
“I knew, of course,” he said. “Do you understand the significance of the nether regions?”
I sighed, a little too loudly, and my father narrowed his eyes. Quickly I said: “They are like everything else. They’re like the cities. The cities are deserts where people are alone and lonely. They don’t love one another.”
“Don’t love one another,” intoned my father, also sighing. “We no longer love one another. When we realize that we need one another we will stop disappearing. This is a lesson to us. A hard lesson, but, I hope, an effective one.”
My father continued to speak, but I watched him without listening. After a few minutes he stopped abruptly: “Are you listening to me?” he said. I was surprised to detect real concern in his voice. He looked at me questioningly. “I’ve always looked after you,” he said, “ever since you were little.”
12. The Cartographers’ Fall
I don’t know when it was that I noticed that my father had become depressed. It probably happened quite gradually without my mother or me noticing it.
Even when I did become aware of it I attributed it to a woman. My father had a number of lovers and his moods usually reflected the success or failure of these relationships.
But I know now that he had heard already of Hurst and Jamov, the first two Cartographers to disappear. The news was suppressed for several weeks and then, somehow or other, leaked to the press. Certainly the Cartographers had enemies amongst the civil servants who regarded them as overproud and overpaid, and it was probably from one of these civil servants that the press heard the news.
When the news finally broke I understood my father’s depression and felt sorry for him.
I didn’t know who to help him. I wanted, badly, to make him happy. I had never ever been able to give him anything or do anything for him that he couldn’t do better himself. Now I wanted to help him, to show him I understood.
I found him sitting in front of the television one night when I returned from my office and I sat quietly beside him. He seemed more kindly now and he placed his hand on my knee and patted it.
I sat there for a while, overcome with the new warmth of this relationship, and then, unable to contain my emotion any more, I blurted out: “You could change your job.”
My father stiffened and sat bolt upright. The pressure of his hand on my knee increased until I yelped with pain, and still he held on, hurting me terribly.
“You are a fool,” he said, “you wouldn’t know if you were up yourself.”
Through the pain in my leg, I felt the intensity of my father’s fear.
13.Why the World Needs Cartographers
My father woke me at 3.00 a.m. to tell me why the world needed Cartographers. He smelled of whisky and seemed, once again, to be very gentle.
“The world needs Cartographers,” he said softly, “because if they didn’t have Cartographers the fools wouldn’t know where they were. They wouldn’t know if they were up themselves if they didn’t have a Cartographer to tell them what’s happening. The world needs Cartographers,” my father said, “it fucking well needs Cartographers.”
14.One Final Scene
Let me describe a final scene to you: I am sitting on the sofa my father brought home when I was five years old. I am watching television. My father is sitting in a leather armchair that once belonged to his father and which has always been exclusively his. My mother is sitting in the dining alcove with her cards spread across the table, playing one more interminable game of patience.
I glance casually across at my father to see if he is doing anything more than stare into space, and notice, with a terrible shock, that he was showing the first signs of dematerializing.
“What are you staring at?” My father, in fact, has been staring at me.
“Nothing.”
“Well, don’t.”
Nervously I return my eyes to the inanity of the television. I don’t know what to do. Should I tell my father that he is dematerializing? If I don’t tell him will he notice? I feel I should do something but I can feel, already, the anger in his voice. His anger is nothing new. But this is possibly the beginning of a tide of uncontrollable rage. If he knows he is dematerializing, he will think I don’t love him. He will blame me. He will attack me. Old as he is, he is still considerably stronger than I am and he could hurt me badly. I stare determinedly at the television and feel my father’s eyes on me.
I try to love my father, I try very, very hard.
I attempt to remember how I felt about him when I was little, in the days when he was still occasionally tender towards me.
But it’s no good.
Because I can only remember how he has hit me, hurt me, humiliated me and flirted with my girlfriends. I realize, with a flush of panic and guilt, that I don’t love him. In spite of which I say: “I love you.”
My mother looks up sharply from her cards and lets out a surprised cry.
I turn to my father. He has almost disappeared. I can see the leather of the chair through his stomach.
I don’t know whether it is my unconvincing declaration of love or my mother’s exclamation that makes my father laugh. For whatever reason, he begins to laugh uncontrollably: “You bloody fools,” he gasps, “I wish you could see the looks on your bloody silly faces.”
And he is gone.
My mother looks across at me nervously, a card still in her hand. “Do you love me?” she asks.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Short Poems by Dorothy Parker
Words of Comfort to Be Scratched on a Mirror
Helen of Troy had a wandering glance;
Sappho's restriction was only the sky;
Ninon was ever the chatter of France;
But oh, what a good girl am I!
A Very Short Song
Once, when I was young and true,
Someone left me sad-
Broke my brittle heart in two;
And that is very bad.
Love is for unlucky folk,
Love is but a curse.
Once there was a heart I broke;
And that, I think, is worse.
Anecdote
So silent I when Love was by
He yawned, and turned away;
But Sorrow clings to my apron-strings,
I have so much to say.
Coda
There's little in taking or giving,
There's little in water or wine;
This living, this living, this living
Was never a project of mine.
Oh, hard is the struggle, and sparse is
The gain of the one at the top,
For art is a form of catharsis,
And love is a permanent flop,
And work is the province of cattle,
And rest's for a clam in a shell,
So I'm thinking of throwing the battle-
Would you kindly direct me to hell?
Distance
Were you to cross the world, my dear,
To work or love or fight,
I could be calm and wistful here,
And close my eyes at night.
It were a sweet and gallant pain
To be a sea apart;
But, oh, to have you down the lane
Is bitter to my heart.
Faute De Mieux
Travel, trouble, music, art,
A kiss, a frock, a rhyme-
I never said they feed my heart,
But still they pass my time.
Sanctuary
My land is bare of chattering folk;
The clouds are low along the ridges,
And sweet's the air with curly smoke
From all my burning bridges.
Theory
Into love and out again,
Thus I went, and thus I go.
Spare your voice, and hold your pen-
Well and bitterly I know
All the songs were ever sung,
All the words were ever said;
Could it be, when I was young,
Some one dropped me on my head?
Helen of Troy had a wandering glance;
Sappho's restriction was only the sky;
Ninon was ever the chatter of France;
But oh, what a good girl am I!
A Very Short Song
Once, when I was young and true,
Someone left me sad-
Broke my brittle heart in two;
And that is very bad.
Love is for unlucky folk,
Love is but a curse.
Once there was a heart I broke;
And that, I think, is worse.
Anecdote
So silent I when Love was by
He yawned, and turned away;
But Sorrow clings to my apron-strings,
I have so much to say.
Coda
There's little in taking or giving,
There's little in water or wine;
This living, this living, this living
Was never a project of mine.
Oh, hard is the struggle, and sparse is
The gain of the one at the top,
For art is a form of catharsis,
And love is a permanent flop,
And work is the province of cattle,
And rest's for a clam in a shell,
So I'm thinking of throwing the battle-
Would you kindly direct me to hell?
Distance
Were you to cross the world, my dear,
To work or love or fight,
I could be calm and wistful here,
And close my eyes at night.
It were a sweet and gallant pain
To be a sea apart;
But, oh, to have you down the lane
Is bitter to my heart.
Faute De Mieux
Travel, trouble, music, art,
A kiss, a frock, a rhyme-
I never said they feed my heart,
But still they pass my time.
Sanctuary
My land is bare of chattering folk;
The clouds are low along the ridges,
And sweet's the air with curly smoke
From all my burning bridges.
Theory
Into love and out again,
Thus I went, and thus I go.
Spare your voice, and hold your pen-
Well and bitterly I know
All the songs were ever sung,
All the words were ever said;
Could it be, when I was young,
Some one dropped me on my head?
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Dylan Thomas, x3
Clown In The Moon
My tears are like the quiet drift
Of petals from some magic rose;
And all my grief flows from the rift
Of unremembered skies and snows.
I think, that if I touched the earth,
It would crumble;
It is so sad and beautiful,
So tremulously like a dream
Was There A Time
Was there a time when dancers with their fiddles
In children's circuses could stay their troubles?
There was a time they could cry over books,
But time has set its maggot on their track.
Under the arc of the sky they are unsafe.
What's never known is safest in this life.
Under the skysigns they who have no arms
Have cleanest hands, and, as the heartless ghost
Alone's unhurt, so the blind man sees best
Sometimes The Sky's Too Bright
Sometimes the sky's too bright,
Or has too many clouds or birds,
And far away's too sharp a sun
To nourish thinking of him.
Why is my hand too blunt
To cut in front of me
My horrid images for me,
Of over-fruitful smiles,
The weightless touching of the lip
I wish to know
I cannot lift, but can,
The creature with the angel's face
Who tells me hurt,
And sees my body go
Down into misery?
No stopping. Put the smile
Where tears have come to dry.
The angel's hurt is left;
His telling burns.
Sometimes a woman's heart has salt,
Or too much blood;
I tear her breast,
And see the blood is mine,
Flowing from her, but mine,
And then I think
Perhaps the sky's too bright;
And watch my hand,
But do not follow it,
And feel the pain it gives,
But do not ache.
My tears are like the quiet drift
Of petals from some magic rose;
And all my grief flows from the rift
Of unremembered skies and snows.
I think, that if I touched the earth,
It would crumble;
It is so sad and beautiful,
So tremulously like a dream
Was There A Time
Was there a time when dancers with their fiddles
In children's circuses could stay their troubles?
There was a time they could cry over books,
But time has set its maggot on their track.
Under the arc of the sky they are unsafe.
What's never known is safest in this life.
Under the skysigns they who have no arms
Have cleanest hands, and, as the heartless ghost
Alone's unhurt, so the blind man sees best
Sometimes The Sky's Too Bright
Sometimes the sky's too bright,
Or has too many clouds or birds,
And far away's too sharp a sun
To nourish thinking of him.
Why is my hand too blunt
To cut in front of me
My horrid images for me,
Of over-fruitful smiles,
The weightless touching of the lip
I wish to know
I cannot lift, but can,
The creature with the angel's face
Who tells me hurt,
And sees my body go
Down into misery?
No stopping. Put the smile
Where tears have come to dry.
The angel's hurt is left;
His telling burns.
Sometimes a woman's heart has salt,
Or too much blood;
I tear her breast,
And see the blood is mine,
Flowing from her, but mine,
And then I think
Perhaps the sky's too bright;
And watch my hand,
But do not follow it,
And feel the pain it gives,
But do not ache.
Monday, September 15, 2008
Insomniac- Sylvia Plath
The night is only a sort of carbon paper,
Blueblack, with the much-poked periods of stars
Letting in the light, peephole after peephole --
A bonewhite light, like death, behind all things.
Under the eyes of the stars and the moon's rictus
He suffers his desert pillow, sleeplessness
Stretching its fine, irritating sand in all directions.
Over and over the old, granular movie
Exposes embarrassments--the mizzling days
Of childhood and adolescence, sticky with dreams,
Parental faces on tall stalks, alternately stern and tearful,
A garden of buggy rose that made him cry.
His forehead is bumpy as a sack of rocks.
Memories jostle each other for face-room like obsolete film stars.
He is immune to pills: red, purple, blue --
How they lit the tedium of the protracted evening!
Those sugary planets whose influence won for him
A life baptized in no-life for a while,
And the sweet, drugged waking of a forgetful baby.
Now the pills are worn-out and silly, like classical gods.
Their poppy-sleepy colors do him no good.
His head is a little interior of grey mirrors.
Each gesture flees immediately down an alley
Of diminishing perspectives, and its significance
Drains like water out the hole at the far end.
He lives without privacy in a lidless room,
The bald slots of his eyes stiffened wide-open
On the incessant heat-lightning flicker of situations.
Nightlong, in the granite yard, invisible cats
Have been howling like women, or damaged instruments.
Already he can feel daylight, his white disease,
Creeping up with her hatful of trivial repetitions.
The city is a map of cheerful twitters now,
And everywhere people, eyes mica-silver and blank,
Are riding to work in rows, as if recently brainwashed.
Blueblack, with the much-poked periods of stars
Letting in the light, peephole after peephole --
A bonewhite light, like death, behind all things.
Under the eyes of the stars and the moon's rictus
He suffers his desert pillow, sleeplessness
Stretching its fine, irritating sand in all directions.
Over and over the old, granular movie
Exposes embarrassments--the mizzling days
Of childhood and adolescence, sticky with dreams,
Parental faces on tall stalks, alternately stern and tearful,
A garden of buggy rose that made him cry.
His forehead is bumpy as a sack of rocks.
Memories jostle each other for face-room like obsolete film stars.
He is immune to pills: red, purple, blue --
How they lit the tedium of the protracted evening!
Those sugary planets whose influence won for him
A life baptized in no-life for a while,
And the sweet, drugged waking of a forgetful baby.
Now the pills are worn-out and silly, like classical gods.
Their poppy-sleepy colors do him no good.
His head is a little interior of grey mirrors.
Each gesture flees immediately down an alley
Of diminishing perspectives, and its significance
Drains like water out the hole at the far end.
He lives without privacy in a lidless room,
The bald slots of his eyes stiffened wide-open
On the incessant heat-lightning flicker of situations.
Nightlong, in the granite yard, invisible cats
Have been howling like women, or damaged instruments.
Already he can feel daylight, his white disease,
Creeping up with her hatful of trivial repetitions.
The city is a map of cheerful twitters now,
And everywhere people, eyes mica-silver and blank,
Are riding to work in rows, as if recently brainwashed.
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Cosmopolitan Greetings- Allen Ginsberg
To Struga Festival Golden Wreath Laureates
& International Bards 1986
Stand up against governments, against God.
Stay irresponsible.
Say only what we know & imagine.
Absolutes are coercion.
Change is absolute.
Ordinary mind includes eternal perceptions.
Observe what's vivid.
Notice what you notice.
Catch yourself thinking.
Vividness is self-selecting.
If we don't show anyone, we're free to write anything.
Remember the future.
Advise only yourself.
Don't drink yourself to death.
Two molecules clanking against each other requires an observer to become
scientific data.
The measuring instrument determines the appearance of the phenomenal
world after Einstein.
The universe is subjective.
Walt Whitman celebrated Person.
We Are an observer, measuring instrument, eye, subject, Person.Universe is person.
Inside skull vast as outside skull.
Mind is outer space.
"Each on his bed spoke to himself alone, making no sound."
First thought, best thought.
Mind is shapely, Art is shapely.
Maximum information, minimum number of syllables.
Syntax condensed, sound is solid.
Intense fragments of spoken idiom, best.
Consonants around vowels make sense.
Savor vowels, appreciate consonants.
Subject is known by what she sees.
Others can measure their vision by what we see.
Candor ends paranoia.
Kral Majales
June 25, 1986
Boulder, Colorado
& International Bards 1986
Stand up against governments, against God.
Stay irresponsible.
Say only what we know & imagine.
Absolutes are coercion.
Change is absolute.
Ordinary mind includes eternal perceptions.
Observe what's vivid.
Notice what you notice.
Catch yourself thinking.
Vividness is self-selecting.
If we don't show anyone, we're free to write anything.
Remember the future.
Advise only yourself.
Don't drink yourself to death.
Two molecules clanking against each other requires an observer to become
scientific data.
The measuring instrument determines the appearance of the phenomenal
world after Einstein.
The universe is subjective.
Walt Whitman celebrated Person.
We Are an observer, measuring instrument, eye, subject, Person.Universe is person.
Inside skull vast as outside skull.
Mind is outer space.
"Each on his bed spoke to himself alone, making no sound."
First thought, best thought.
Mind is shapely, Art is shapely.
Maximum information, minimum number of syllables.
Syntax condensed, sound is solid.
Intense fragments of spoken idiom, best.
Consonants around vowels make sense.
Savor vowels, appreciate consonants.
Subject is known by what she sees.
Others can measure their vision by what we see.
Candor ends paranoia.
Kral Majales
June 25, 1986
Boulder, Colorado
Thursday, September 11, 2008
oh Ezra!
Meditatio
When I carefully consider the curious habits of dogs
I am compelled to conclude
That man is the superior animal.
When I consider the curious habits of man
I confess, my friend, I am puzzled.
The Encounter
All the while they were talking the new morality
Her eyes explored me.
And when I rose to go
Her fingers were like the tissue
Of a Japanese paper napkin.
Alba
As cool as the pale wet leaves
of lily-of-the-valley
She lay beside me in the dawn.
And the days are not full enough
And the days are not full enough
And the nights are not full enough
And life slips by like a field mouse
Not shaking the grass
Francesca
You came in out of the night
And there were flowers in your hand,
Now you will come out of a confusion of people,
Out of a turmoil of speech about you.
I who have seen you amid the primal things
Was angry when they spoke your name
In ordinary places.I would that the cool waves might flow over my mind,
And that the world should dry as a dead leaf,
Or as a dandelion see-pod and be swept away,
So that I might find you again,
Alone.
L'Art
Green arsenic smeared on an egg-white cloth,
Crushed strawberries! Come, let us feast our eyes.
When I carefully consider the curious habits of dogs
I am compelled to conclude
That man is the superior animal.
When I consider the curious habits of man
I confess, my friend, I am puzzled.
The Encounter
All the while they were talking the new morality
Her eyes explored me.
And when I rose to go
Her fingers were like the tissue
Of a Japanese paper napkin.
Alba
As cool as the pale wet leaves
of lily-of-the-valley
She lay beside me in the dawn.
And the days are not full enough
And the days are not full enough
And the nights are not full enough
And life slips by like a field mouse
Not shaking the grass
Francesca
You came in out of the night
And there were flowers in your hand,
Now you will come out of a confusion of people,
Out of a turmoil of speech about you.
I who have seen you amid the primal things
Was angry when they spoke your name
In ordinary places.I would that the cool waves might flow over my mind,
And that the world should dry as a dead leaf,
Or as a dandelion see-pod and be swept away,
So that I might find you again,
Alone.
L'Art
Green arsenic smeared on an egg-white cloth,
Crushed strawberries! Come, let us feast our eyes.
Poems on Recycled Paper
you’re so prolific
sometimes i worry
one day you will run-
out of words.
or the world of paper.
and
the thought of you-
wordless
erases all of mine.
so,
i’ll teach you to recycle
paper. and
i’m working on a new language
so you’ll never have to repeat
yourself…
again.
you’ll hand me a poem
on recycled paper
the old words incarcerated
between the fibres
and the new
patterning the surface…
but we wont yet understand.
and you’ll wonder how
i can love what
you have written,
twice.
and i’ll swear i
can feel the pulpy
beat of recycled
heart
needing me.
(and then i’ll start you a new dictionary)
sometimes i worry
one day you will run-
out of words.
or the world of paper.
and
the thought of you-
wordless
erases all of mine.
so,
i’ll teach you to recycle
paper. and
i’m working on a new language
so you’ll never have to repeat
yourself…
again.
you’ll hand me a poem
on recycled paper
the old words incarcerated
between the fibres
and the new
patterning the surface…
but we wont yet understand.
and you’ll wonder how
i can love what
you have written,
twice.
and i’ll swear i
can feel the pulpy
beat of recycled
heart
needing me.
(and then i’ll start you a new dictionary)
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Song - by Frank O'hara
I am stuck in traffic in a taxicab
which is typical
and not just of modern life
mud clambers up the trellis of my nerves
must lovers of Eros end up with Venus
muss es sein? es muss nicht sein, I tell you
how I hate disease, it's like worrying
that comes true
and it simply must not be able to happen
in a world where you are possible
my love
nothing can go wrong for us, tell me
which is typical
and not just of modern life
mud clambers up the trellis of my nerves
must lovers of Eros end up with Venus
muss es sein? es muss nicht sein, I tell you
how I hate disease, it's like worrying
that comes true
and it simply must not be able to happen
in a world where you are possible
my love
nothing can go wrong for us, tell me
Two poems by Dransfield
Pas de deux for Lovers-
Michael Dransfield
Morning ought not
to be complex.
The sun is a seed
case at dawn into the long
furrow of history.
To wake
and go
would be so simple.
Yet
how the
first light
makes gold her hair
upon my arm.
How then
shall I leave,
and where away to go. Day
is so deep already with involvement.
July With Her-
Michael Dransfield
Of a day
when it ended
keep nothing but light
the incense of her breasts
motiveless satisfaction
Forget,
before dark wishes down
how her lips tasted
how gladly she loved you
in the bright trees
Leave all
sight gave
these intrinsic
landscapes
frosted colours
Take only with you
when you go
a handful of what
happened
to heart and mind
before shadow
great with blue
doubts
will have fragmented
as time does
memory's
narrative
Michael Dransfield
Morning ought not
to be complex.
The sun is a seed
case at dawn into the long
furrow of history.
To wake
and go
would be so simple.
Yet
how the
first light
makes gold her hair
upon my arm.
How then
shall I leave,
and where away to go. Day
is so deep already with involvement.
July With Her-
Michael Dransfield
Of a day
when it ended
keep nothing but light
the incense of her breasts
motiveless satisfaction
Forget,
before dark wishes down
how her lips tasted
how gladly she loved you
in the bright trees
Leave all
sight gave
these intrinsic
landscapes
frosted colours
Take only with you
when you go
a handful of what
happened
to heart and mind
before shadow
great with blue
doubts
will have fragmented
as time does
memory's
narrative
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
5 poems by Charles Bukowski
1-
it was just a little while ago
almost dawn
blackbirds on the telephone wire
waiting
as I eat yesterday's
forgotten sandwich
at 6 a.m.
on a quiet Sunday morning.
one shoe in the corner
standing upright
the other laying on it's
side.
yes, some lives were made to be
wasted.
2-
Girl In A Miniskirt Reading The Bible Outside My Window
Sunday,
I am eating a
grapefruit, church is over at the Russian
Orthadox to the
west.she is dark
of Eastern descent,
large brown eyes look up from the Bible
then down. a small red and black
Bible, and as she reads
her legs keep moving, moving,
she is doing a slow rythmic dance
reading the Bible. . .
long gold earrings;
2 gold bracelets on each arm,
and it's a mini-suit, I suppose,
the cloth hugs her body,
the lightest of tans is that cloth,
she twists this way and that,
long yellow legs warm in the sun. . .
there is no escaping her being
there is no desire to. . .
my radio is playing symphonic music
that she cannot hear
but her movements coincide exactly
to the rythms of the
symphony. . .
she is dark, she is dark
she is reading about God.
I am God.
3-
Bluebird
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I'm not going
to let anybody see
you.
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pur whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that
he's
in there.
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess
me up?
you want to screw up the
works?
you want to blow my book sales in
Europe?
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody's asleep.
I say, I know that you're there,
so don't be
sad.
then I put him back,
but he's singing a little
in there, I haven't quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it's nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don't
weep, do
you?
4-
Oh Yes
there are worse things than
being alone
but it often takes decades
to realize this
and most often
when you do
it's too late
and there's nothing worse
than
too late.
5-
Yes Yes
when God created love he didn't help most
when God created dogs He didn't help dogs
when God created plants that was average
when God created hate we had a standard utility
when God created me He created me
when God created the monkey He was asleep
when He created the giraffe He was drunk
when He created narcotics He was high
and when He created suicide He was low
when He created you lying in bed
He knew what He was doing
He was drunk and He was high
and He created the mountians and the sea and fire at the same time
He made some mistakes
but when He created you lying in bed
He came all over His Blessed Universe.
it was just a little while ago
almost dawn
blackbirds on the telephone wire
waiting
as I eat yesterday's
forgotten sandwich
at 6 a.m.
on a quiet Sunday morning.
one shoe in the corner
standing upright
the other laying on it's
side.
yes, some lives were made to be
wasted.
2-
Girl In A Miniskirt Reading The Bible Outside My Window
Sunday,
I am eating a
grapefruit, church is over at the Russian
Orthadox to the
west.she is dark
of Eastern descent,
large brown eyes look up from the Bible
then down. a small red and black
Bible, and as she reads
her legs keep moving, moving,
she is doing a slow rythmic dance
reading the Bible. . .
long gold earrings;
2 gold bracelets on each arm,
and it's a mini-suit, I suppose,
the cloth hugs her body,
the lightest of tans is that cloth,
she twists this way and that,
long yellow legs warm in the sun. . .
there is no escaping her being
there is no desire to. . .
my radio is playing symphonic music
that she cannot hear
but her movements coincide exactly
to the rythms of the
symphony. . .
she is dark, she is dark
she is reading about God.
I am God.
3-
Bluebird
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I'm not going
to let anybody see
you.
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pur whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that
he's
in there.
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess
me up?
you want to screw up the
works?
you want to blow my book sales in
Europe?
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody's asleep.
I say, I know that you're there,
so don't be
sad.
then I put him back,
but he's singing a little
in there, I haven't quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it's nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don't
weep, do
you?
4-
Oh Yes
there are worse things than
being alone
but it often takes decades
to realize this
and most often
when you do
it's too late
and there's nothing worse
than
too late.
5-
Yes Yes
when God created love he didn't help most
when God created dogs He didn't help dogs
when God created plants that was average
when God created hate we had a standard utility
when God created me He created me
when God created the monkey He was asleep
when He created the giraffe He was drunk
when He created narcotics He was high
and when He created suicide He was low
when He created you lying in bed
He knew what He was doing
He was drunk and He was high
and He created the mountians and the sea and fire at the same time
He made some mistakes
but when He created you lying in bed
He came all over His Blessed Universe.
Monday, September 8, 2008
Morning’s Early Dark
About the other
night
I’m sorry,
Four a.m.
I can’t begin to explain
to you,
how bad I am
at doing so.
What I was trying to say
was
“don’t go”.
But-
I didn’t.
And you did.
night
I’m sorry,
Four a.m.
I can’t begin to explain
to you,
how bad I am
at doing so.
What I was trying to say
was
“don’t go”.
But-
I didn’t.
And you did.
The Jerk- Jeffrey McDaniel
Hey you, dragging the halo--
how about a holiday in the islands of grief?
Tongue is the word I wish to have with you.
Your eyes are so blue they leak.
Your legs are longer than a prisoner’s
last night on death row.
I’m filthier than the coal miner’s bathtub
and nastier than the breath of Charles Bukowski.
You’re a dirty little windshield.
I’m standing behind you on the subway,
hard as calculus. My breath
be sticking to your neck like graffiti.
I’m sitting opposite you in the bar, waiting
for you to uncross your boundaries.
I want to rip off your logic
and make passionate sense to you.
I want to ride in the swing of your hips.
My fingers will be digging up in you like quotation marks,
blazing your limbs into parts of speech.
But with me for a lover, you won’t need
catastrophes. What attracted me in the first place
will ultimately make me resent you.
I’ll start telling you lies,
and my lies will sparkle,
become the bad stars you chart your life by.
I’ll stare at other women so blatantly
you’ll hear my eyes peeling,
because sex with you is like Great Britain:
cold, groggy, and a little uptight.
Your bed is a big, soft calculator
where my problems multiply.
Your brain is a garage
I park my bullshit in, for free.
And you’re not really my new girlfriend,
just another flop sequel of the first one,
who was based on the true story of my mother.
You’re so ugly I forgot how to spell!
I’ll cheat on you like a ninth grade math test.
And break your heart just for the sound it makes.
You’re the this we need to put an end to.
The more you apologize, the less I forgive you.
So, how about it? You, me, and a bucket of cafe au lait...
how about a holiday in the islands of grief?
Tongue is the word I wish to have with you.
Your eyes are so blue they leak.
Your legs are longer than a prisoner’s
last night on death row.
I’m filthier than the coal miner’s bathtub
and nastier than the breath of Charles Bukowski.
You’re a dirty little windshield.
I’m standing behind you on the subway,
hard as calculus. My breath
be sticking to your neck like graffiti.
I’m sitting opposite you in the bar, waiting
for you to uncross your boundaries.
I want to rip off your logic
and make passionate sense to you.
I want to ride in the swing of your hips.
My fingers will be digging up in you like quotation marks,
blazing your limbs into parts of speech.
But with me for a lover, you won’t need
catastrophes. What attracted me in the first place
will ultimately make me resent you.
I’ll start telling you lies,
and my lies will sparkle,
become the bad stars you chart your life by.
I’ll stare at other women so blatantly
you’ll hear my eyes peeling,
because sex with you is like Great Britain:
cold, groggy, and a little uptight.
Your bed is a big, soft calculator
where my problems multiply.
Your brain is a garage
I park my bullshit in, for free.
And you’re not really my new girlfriend,
just another flop sequel of the first one,
who was based on the true story of my mother.
You’re so ugly I forgot how to spell!
I’ll cheat on you like a ninth grade math test.
And break your heart just for the sound it makes.
You’re the this we need to put an end to.
The more you apologize, the less I forgive you.
So, how about it? You, me, and a bucket of cafe au lait...
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