*
appreciation: Camille Martin's "comatose in paradise . . ."
*
Camille Martin—
her "six sonnets" in the webzine Moria—
this is the sixth one:
comatose in paradise, but happy, happy
feet! is this where i want to go? thrust
into an age unfavourable to being
a guest in one's own home? the guest
so evolved its dying smile causes
offspring to birth on the spot? progeny
doomed to fail superbly, like houdini's
fetters? is this what i want? am i lucky to think
i am? these twittering birds have nothing
on the silence of magicians from the grave. someday
paradise will be thought savage. did rain fall
because i wanted to write a poem about love,
causing significant damage to blameless paper?
here comes the bus, fool. is that it?
*
Paradise/happy = perfection—
a perfect septenary ("A metrical line of 7 feet, usually . . . trochaic," the Princeton Handbook defines it)—
COmaTOSE in PARaDISE, but HAPpy, HAPpy
—
tose/dise . . . because "All thought emits a TOSS of the DICE" (Mallarmé)—
All thought dies in paradise—
braindead in paradise. Comatose—
replete hibernative stasis which Eliot's veggod protag protests at being cruelly wakened stirred out of, into the Waste Land—
comatose=out of it. Out of it in paradise. OD'd in paradise.
But
"happy, happy": the flapping harpy wings of the angel perched on edenfencegate to oversee the usual expulsion——
"happy / feet!" : Trochaic feet impelling the expelled soul, "thrust"
out of childhood's glade, into adulthood (that "age unfavourable" to being at home anywhere perhaps, much less a "guest" there)—
or into a post-ecological nowhere, homeless in nature—
age = evolved = dying = offspring = birth = progeny =
Houdini, "magician from the grave" bursting free the bounds of every painted and publicized coffin he's chained into
(the fetters of poetic meter—as always—failing superbly)
to provide a show, a career—
all his flamboyant acts of entombment-and-resurrection, a 3 minute Christ—
then famously requesting his friends/his future mourners to
(after the final stunt of his death)
commence seance for a message from him from the afterlife
into which he has been "thrust", from whence he radios nothing but the normal background noises of nature's "silence"—
(as I remember the story, he asked his friends to wait at a particular spot in the park (cue birdtwitter soundtrack) on a specific date where/when he would "contact" them if it was possible—if some telegraphable aspect of him remained postdeath—)
that meetingpoint in the park—what exact location, for one who had based his vocation on dislocating his shoulder to achieve escape from straitjackets, who had saved-his-life so many times by violent wrenchings of his joints and frame, his artistry to dislocate himself within a lock,
to find himself located and situated finally—
"is this where i want to go?" (as if I had a choice not to)—
The desire for a paradisal perfection in one's form, for a voice that will speak from past its physical life
is what drives the poet who's waiting for the bus to bear her away,
anyway is that it, is that the way? After "significant damage"
to the "blameless paper",
the "fool", the "magician" metaphors for the poet—
The eight questionmarks in the poem function as the default impatience (waiting for the bus) that interpolates all such
expressions of the poet's irritabilitus
which guilt-ridden is continually insisting "i wanted to write a poem about love"
(that's what I meant to write, the poet always testifies at his trial, that was my intent)
—love is paradise, even if when that love is over we curse the hypnotic trance that sustained us in that illusory eden—
the comatose quiescence/ simulacrum of death / "its dying smile" of happiness in that "savage" paradise, savage ergo primal, ergo what is past,
gone, over, paradise is always once-was, not now-is—
now is the bus-bench, where we wait to be houdinied from the chains of an ordinary day's luck-lock,
the bus is on time, like those motile trochees,
unlike the posthumous Houdini it will show up per schedule,
the rain via its own temporal metrical system will arrive
when it should,
but the poem won't—
*
appreciation: Camille Martin's "comatose in paradise . . ."
*
Camille Martin—
her "six sonnets" in the webzine Moria—
this is the sixth one:
comatose in paradise, but happy, happy
feet! is this where i want to go? thrust
into an age unfavourable to being
a guest in one's own home? the guest
so evolved its dying smile causes
offspring to birth on the spot? progeny
doomed to fail superbly, like houdini's
fetters? is this what i want? am i lucky to think
i am? these twittering birds have nothing
on the silence of magicians from the grave. someday
paradise will be thought savage. did rain fall
because i wanted to write a poem about love,
causing significant damage to blameless paper?
here comes the bus, fool. is that it?
*
Paradise/happy = perfection—
a perfect septenary ("A metrical line of 7 feet, usually . . . trochaic," the Princeton Handbook defines it)—
COmaTOSE in PARaDISE, but HAPpy, HAPpy
—
tose/dise . . . because "All thought emits a TOSS of the DICE" (Mallarmé)—
All thought dies in paradise—
braindead in paradise. Comatose—
replete hibernative stasis which Eliot's veggod protag protests at being cruelly wakened stirred out of, into the Waste Land—
comatose=out of it. Out of it in paradise. OD'd in paradise.
But
"happy, happy": the flapping harpy wings of the angel perched on edenfencegate to oversee the usual expulsion——
"happy / feet!" : Trochaic feet impelling the expelled soul, "thrust"
out of childhood's glade, into adulthood (that "age unfavourable" to being at home anywhere perhaps, much less a "guest" there)—
or into a post-ecological nowhere, homeless in nature—
age = evolved = dying = offspring = birth = progeny =
Houdini, "magician from the grave" bursting free the bounds of every painted and publicized coffin he's chained into
(the fetters of poetic meter—as always—failing superbly)
to provide a show, a career—
all his flamboyant acts of entombment-and-resurrection, a 3 minute Christ—
then famously requesting his friends/his future mourners to
(after the final stunt of his death)
commence seance for a message from him from the afterlife
into which he has been "thrust", from whence he radios nothing but the normal background noises of nature's "silence"—
(as I remember the story, he asked his friends to wait at a particular spot in the park (cue birdtwitter soundtrack) on a specific date where/when he would "contact" them if it was possible—if some telegraphable aspect of him remained postdeath—)
that meetingpoint in the park—what exact location, for one who had based his vocation on dislocating his shoulder to achieve escape from straitjackets, who had saved-his-life so many times by violent wrenchings of his joints and frame, his artistry to dislocate himself within a lock,
to find himself located and situated finally—
"is this where i want to go?" (as if I had a choice not to)—
The desire for a paradisal perfection in one's form, for a voice that will speak from past its physical life
is what drives the poet who's waiting for the bus to bear her away,
anyway is that it, is that the way? After "significant damage"
to the "blameless paper",
the "fool", the "magician" metaphors for the poet—
The eight questionmarks in the poem function as the default impatience (waiting for the bus) that interpolates all such
expressions of the poet's irritabilitus
which guilt-ridden is continually insisting "i wanted to write a poem about love"
(that's what I meant to write, the poet always testifies at his trial, that was my intent)
—love is paradise, even if when that love is over we curse the hypnotic trance that sustained us in that illusory eden—
the comatose quiescence/ simulacrum of death / "its dying smile" of happiness in that "savage" paradise, savage ergo primal, ergo what is past,
gone, over, paradise is always once-was, not now-is—
now is the bus-bench, where we wait to be houdinied from the chains of an ordinary day's luck-lock,
the bus is on time, like those motile trochees,
unlike the posthumous Houdini it will show up per schedule,
the rain via its own temporal metrical system will arrive
when it should,
but the poem won't—
*
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