Satire of Myself
The autodidact polymath
grandly inscribes his autograph
upon the patter and the path.
The automathic polydact
pours out his verbal cataract
upon the crackers and the cracked.
This dactomathic autopoly
works his nose for pose and folly,
shouts the house down, calls the trolley.
Hawk-eyed colossus stands astride
the flood of vanity and pride.
As far as his hawk’s eyes can see —
a sea of pride and vanity.
The mathedactic poliauto
stretches out upon his cot, oh,
crunching every crumb he bought, oh.
Polymath autodidactic
practices both tact and tactic —
Licensed Moral Chiropractic.
What can escape his boo? his hiss?
his withering analysis? —
including this, including this.
Scrambled Ode on Toast
I. Strophe
I was not blessed by any god
I was not cursed by any toad
a trackless plod
my only road
Angry at this state of thing
my brain was frowned, and blocked my eye
Perchance wounded, I let it sting
perchance happy, I let it die
No action not unfrivolous
no word not irony
double negatus
the only posity
Then came you, the open oracle,
unlike the used to block and blue.
What made this miracle?
How came how come we to be true?
What force crossed our roads?
How did we get this far?
ordered
by a god, a toad
a star?
II. Antistrophe
You are more wondrous far, my love
because no destiny nor fate
sent by some faceless upabove
chose you to be my always mate
Instead, amid this blandering
that knows less sympathy than grief
a random rayshine sundering
the bleary, camest thou, my relief.
The tumbling musts appear to dance
because your face has ordered it
what was the hurried brush of chance
amazing paints the picture of romance.
The precariate
adangle
Is caught at such an angle
to perfect fit.
III. Epode
When we’re apart
when I’m alone
there is no stone to key the arch,
no gravity to grab the stone.
I tumble in space
vainstriving to avoid
reflections of my only face
and vicious shards of asteroid.
It I had a plan
I’d navigate the cosmic swarms,
and were I a stronger man,
I’d dig for you among the random worms.
But you have taught me an unearthly faith –
that you reside in faith’s own chrysalis;
emerging, you eat of the sunlight, then
traverse the worse
just me to kiss
and so restore the universe.
Scriptorial
Writing at its most fundamental? Markings corresponding to something – sounds, calculations, counting sheep.
At some point, pictures don’t cut it. You want something that does not stop you to demand appreciation, awe, fear. You want something you can take in, apprehend at the same pace you fling yourself from one moment to another. You want to inter-loop the present with past calculations about the future.
Absent remarkable penmanship, bizarre and arresting fonts, eccentric inks, you don’t prefer to think about the writing itself.
To turn this tool to an artistic purpose – is it really a good idea?
It’s all so abstract. There’s music, there are the plastic arts, bestriding both is literature.
Using the writing tool, I will so arrange the sounds that you will want to dance to the rhythms, you will want to croon along with the melodies, all the while shaping phonemes into representations of not only objects, but the superset of objects, ideas, and not just ideas but representations of the relationships of the ideas, and not just the static relationships, but the calculus of those relationships over time and through space ever dynamic.
Among this symphony of ideas will be persons of such stark reality that you will not doubt that you are gazing through a temporal looking glass at their all too real world, you are the shadow, they are the substance.
Emma Bovary will press her lips to the glass, and you will hungrily and in vain press yours.
You will be one of millions of ghosts haunting the quarterdeck of the Pequod. There is Ahab – he has no idea of any of you, does not sense a single presence.
And as you labor through the sulfurous labyrinth of Rimbaud’s beautiful agony, you will long for him to turn and simply look you in the eyes.
All this is writing, not so fundamental.
Do I write to earn Arthur’s attention, so that Emma will finally find fulfillment in no other arms but mine, so Ahab and I can die together, savage shipmates, pinned to the bleeding hide of a white whale that hold us both in an indifference beneath contempt?
Perhaps I write because it’s lonely on this side of the glass.
Seven League Stride
Seven League Stride
on legendary shoes
in
Cast Iron Pants
Today is no legend —
got new soles on those shoes
got Cast Iron Pants
and the will the see ahead
Arms swing in league
with the Seven League Stride
Earth bucks beneath each stomp
Rambling motion rumbling laughter
continues the crumbling of battered houses all around
and shuddering walls lose little crumbs of debris
My Big Grin blots out all other light
and by the light of My Big Grin
I’ve got the will to see
ahead
where I see thee
among the raw boards
and heaps of bricks
holding in your hand
our plans for the new place
The Shadow Ball
The far wall of the otherwise dark room
is illuminated by the grand chandelier hanging one chamber over
and by the happy hearth at the opposite side of that adjoining hall
and by scores of tapers simpering among table cloths and party guests
there, in the next room.
Prone on a couch whose back is a protective bulwark
I contemplate the daisy-colored light on the far wall’s surface,
light swirled and disturbed by the shadows of the dancers flickering about
as if music were a pulsing wind,
Shadows of youth and beauty and strength
of perfumes and ringlets and white gloves
of delighted laughter
of searching, hungering eyes
You note:
The light and shadow interplay like once-exciting memories
that feather and dither and dissipate into the corners of this darkening room.
Shape
We never knew.
It was confusing.
A mass of crystals,
star-burst,
tiny sub units orderly in themselves,
but over all jumbled the mass of them jumbled.
The edges could cut you.
Only truly crystal at its edges,
opaque as milk at its core.
The crumbly parts were crystal and clear.
For a long time we displayed it on the mantle
surrounded by shells on a bed of velveteen.
I don’t know, put it away years ago,
edges all knocked off, I think.
I’m not sure where it is.
A box in the basement closet, I suppose.
I could go look.
Silence and the Rest is Silence
O. the Silence screams for silence
and for me especially to be
silent
I try but
the Silence is so loud
before long there may be some humming
How do I know where from?
and Silence doubles its cries
You! be silent, it says.
My eyes roll up into my head
Be still, eyes! I say.
(silence there! screams Silence)
My fingers relapse
Be still, fingers! I whisper
(silence! can you never be silent?)
hunger rumble (silence!) sex swell (silence!) knee
jerk (silence!) wonder (silence!) think (silence!)
cells die one by one the silence is killing them
soon one big callous rubbed and rubbed by
Then: You there! Your silence is too loud!
Songs are Born of Silence
Songs are born of silence
Day is born of dark
We are born blind and speechless
And full of hope
Song in Three Parts
from Persephone
I.
Recall an atmosphere so rich with poetry
That inspiration was the breath of luxury,
And one whose presence charged the air with love —
And one whose presence changed my life with love.
Light was her hand, and lovely was her smile,
Her foot skipped lightly, lightly in her stroll,
Her laughter charmed me in a faerie style,
Fair were her eyes, and fairer was her soul.
Before I saw her I was without sense:
My eyes could tell no darkness from no light,
My heart sang not, my tongue was in a trance;
Then she appeared — the world began to dance!
I was transformed — a creature of delight!
And everything I saw returned my loving glance.
II.
I dropped some love songs in her path, sealed but unsigned,
And sang them only moonless night, so she would never find
The one whose praises crossed the air with love —
The one whose praises lit the sky with love.
I saw how she received them — puzzled, pleased,
With a womanly grace that always stirs
More praise — and this my acheful longing eased:
Yet I hid from her — who was wholly hers.
A thousand times my lips were moved to speak,
A thousand times my heart began to call —
But I stood mute — for pride or judgment’s sake
I could not tell; Is silence strong or weak?
So I remained her beauty’s untold thrall,
My life made and undone by exquisite heartbreak.
II.
She has moved on, as does the pleasant breath of spring,
To bless new portions of the world she’s wandering,
Yes, she whose grace charges the air with love —
Yes, she whose grace charges all life with love.
Light is her hand, and lovely is her smile,
Her foot skips lightly, lightly in her walk,
Her laugh, her eyes, — I think on these awhile
And grief steals my ability to talk;
For she remains what she will always be,
But lives so far removed in space and time
That I recall her more and more dimly,
Almost as phantom, or as reverie,
So I am faithless that the chance was truly mine
To breathe her atmosphere, so rich with poetry.