draft of unfinished poem

CONTRARY

Dawn leaks consequence.  Where it will,
Hovering over appletree or railroad, all
Bright angles, letting the hopes happen.
Maybe the day is blue, meaning south,
Meaning drought can find a path in it,
Lack can offer it reasons for not being—
But if the day were gray, would plenitude
Negate it?  These eithers make me laugh.
They do not consider my wholesome, how
It depends on neitherness's neutrality,
On tepid clemencies and staling bread,
Room temperature always preferred.  See:
My armchair’s placed beneath a glowing
Antenna which even hums a little to ease
The least concern.  Twilight, chores done,
The overflow of panting elevators appears
Frayed, decayed, despite ferocious washing;
A wasteland imposes grateful ants.  Some
Say the afterlife will try to console our taste
For communism: faraway docility, dogma,
Can you restore such douceur?  Transitory
Commeasurate, the body's border throws
That origin an old lens stained with
The road remoteness of incest.  Tilled bare,
Ground mutes me, bored rascal ill;
I maladministrate the war of handshakes:
Sweet rain nets too much pit.  Where covert
Holes perforate air like hints of dark
Guidance—are sky's ways unsullied by
Route or is it all pre-mapped, programmed
By fate?  Here you and I stay loath: we
Conspire with appears, coy counterfeits,
Zeroing in on the spoils that fill spoons
Daily with hesitation while intention
Awaits all festivity.  All reception.  Or else.
I'd sink sulkwise if it weren't such regress.

///

drafts [unfinished

/

an orphan always has the feeling that he is

occupying a position which at any moment

the real child will show up and assume

you wait for that tap on the shoulder

at which point you move back into shadow

while the real child takes your place which

was only a holding-place a space you held

in lieu of the real child whose seat you

were saving waiting for him to arrive at

which point you became superfluous or

worse a simulacrum or worser a timer for

his advent a countdown to his existence

/

The leaves fall barefoot and therefore
negate their prey, though as always I try
not to swallow the dolls that strangle me.

Link between noose and once, 
incompatible as a pair of dice 
and twins I divvy serenity the gods 
once offered daily to Versailles. [

Lacking the juice sense of it what use am I.

Motiveless love, sheerlost hymn of the true,
can I read the seance-meter to see
how thick with ghosts the air will be tonight;

paging my desk or drinking t-square juice,
over the head of my hearing it falls to pose—
the Bride of Tantalus dances with motherly hands

moving side to side, no stagefright bones her
nakedness, they waft like stranglers' pencils
over my imminent knee-dross.  Hydra

at my heels. A tongue lag in the dialogue
resumes.  Erecting arches for now when

each candle bends over to touch its toes

................

that would have freed me vie
some mortality of means. Manic text
hailing a higher theme each scene. But all
agree it's not me the secret signal sends
I'm what's absent
when Columbus shoves a flag in that cunt.
obsequity/ cavorting

*

If a mask remembered all the faces on

which it had been placed,

it might soon be worn transparent,

worn out by memories. 

And metaphorically I should be

faded thin by those that have kissed me,

that have pressed their face over mine.

I should be rendered invisible and I am.

Perhaps it's easier to walk over hot coals

if you wear a disguise.  A costume

helps one avoide the pain of waking

up and seeing someone leaning above you

with pursed lips.

darkmatter bleached by lightyears

explains the cloud of Einstein's hair

and the klepto's keyring explains

all the closed doors we encounter

but in the real world of inexplicable

you can't help it when they align you

with some minor arcana

born of which I kiss

at the exit expo experts explain

how you got here but not

of course how you leave

they save that for the postmortem

I twiddle with fish-thistles

or kneeling to caress a tail-less crotch

remember that the speech apathy of twins

pimple-pleases more sibilantly than ours

the hiss of the S when repeated

as they echo each other's every thought

must lisp pleasantly as it

resounds through the hieratosphere of resemblances

everywhere lying idle or exile I sigh

using beggars to soothe the streets

probably doesn't help the sidewalks

where they have to crouch wheedling

in the sky where physicists live

it operates differently

up there a cyclops swan swallows

the stars that whimper like thatched cymbals

painting the light in parasol colors

the poor beggar pauses to take chains

and explain why capitalism centerstage

her poems always seemed a lot better after cunnilingus

Salome Herod beheaded have a lot to explain

in the bible where clouds have a lot of hair

Einstein's own coiffure

requires quantic disbelief

beauty is backpedal

the continuum spins the pedestal

beneath which I grovel

childhood fades in untold photographs

even the clouds want down please

her iso-splendor of arm pointed out

where stars like gnawed thimbles glow

and dawn dild on my gildmold lids

after the monster drinks the world

he spits out all the people

and they fall into abundance

if abundance is the opposite of this

encore whose enema eats me

don't want you enough to know you

watch my occupant clutch parts of his breast

foundlings of a tweezers species  

embracesomely he was

and felt this random urge to unhand a juggler

unless the cows (those old belgians) were

conveying a debonair vowel

inept attacks swept the barracks

during some antique sleep modes

they kept their demands sultry  

as zeroes scamper across the clock

they scrounged and smoked a lozengeskull

which prompted this roam-colored ghazal

I am an aspirin-old that's all

don't know you enough so I want you

slavish pensive as senile mic succor

though our flesh is minus now the tongue's doubt

your pout (chagrin of suede) led the nation

 divestment empire as that should be lit

writhic and positively full of loll

it's not enough to know you to want you

you know gridlock season of teasers

you see the bottom of that wishingwell festering

hypodermically

shot into strato

spaced and sparsed

sprayed among errata it waters what

to attenuate my trauma

the corruption of cloying devils swathed in sash his flotsam

doesn't want you enough to ignore you

bereave-voids

spittled draped doped fluke finale

 torso fed the marathon beyond shuddering

sullen torn essence across his false perplex of pubes

fear your sedatives will save

///

drafts, roughs/unfinished

 []

often I prefer poetry to be

not al dente but

al mooshy

[]

the waters of going down

and the waters of arising

rush to drown each other while

the carpenter planes at my broken hands

the shavings must be fingernails

that rub barbmime on the moon

while the world unworks itself

disentangles itself from the great thought

that engulfed it in rockets and roses

when a nosecone whimpers at Orpheus' door

and the ocean knocks knocks

on its driftwood to beg

directions home to my hammerlock lair

[]

there was not one wisp light enough

to waft me away to where I wanted

[]

how to build labyrinths

for lip-readers to run through

sprinting toward the riddle

unstoried as highheeled lecterns moviestars

lie slumped across

begging for sardonicisms

[]

to be married like Eva Braun when

after sharing the cake my spouse

shoots me in the head

is that better

than not getting wed

than ending up as a bachelor like me

[]

your blood stains the gulag

not sure what a gulag is

the misalliance of woman and man

[]

pratfall perfect the days

lucid screamings

the stuff that was once so chaff-lost

remains disgraceful descending

a staircase with a harsh-lit lipstick

on its helmet

[]

deflecting biographies

the red bicycle girl leaned on for solace

riding horses laced with kidgloves

and gongs tempo'd by harpsichord

a tame lamp lantern

the last train to bordertown

momentarily limping I went

paisley piano and lassid storm

the estuaries impassable

weeping into your cravat-sash

pearls thrown off in a gesture that

bares the chest for pajamas to purr

gliding fingers over the flesh

and its ballroom blindness

synonymous with cleft

crying silently at gates with black ruffles

launches and nipples entranced for years

at last one dies

shirtlessly noir approaching

the virginal bike-rack panic floorboards random

gleams from white pantages

marred by faceshots and crowns akimbo

receptions led them both to palpitate

expelled from his white lapels he stood

motionless mannered

venue of blue

vein of whore I never loved

venus abhorred a while and stared at passion

internally appalled complicity of

abandoning my birthlings

incompatible as a pair of twins

and a pair of dice

a one-in-six chance of winning

the vigilance of death attending often

the shoulderblades mad-dog lowcut

subtle gowned and drawn to castanets clicking

forgotten your remedies for the basic

foundation cloud clusters or boats

launched skywards
serenity the gods offered only

to Versailles 

///

befuddled

the December 2013 issue of of Poetry (Chicago) Magazine has some very interesting poems in it, and I thought to write a little about some of them, 

and I'll start with Louise Gluck.  Here are some lines from her 3 poems in this issue:

many months away

We could hear

the stiff sheets became

that time of life

—I could go on, and quote many other lines from the poems.  But that's enough for the moment, enough to promulgate my dilemma,

which is, that I don't understand them.  Take the first one for example:

many months away

—what does that mean?  No doubt it's my inadequacy as a reader and perhaps even as a human being that I have no idea what that line means.

Or "that time of life"— again, I'm totally at a loss.  What the heck is she getting at when she writes the line "that time of life"?   

Presumably she has an idea in her mind and is confident that it is being conveyed to the reader when she types out a line like 

the stiff sheets became

—but what that idea is and what she intends by it, is utterly incomprehensible to me.  

///

another feature poem from defunct blog

/

THE RETURN (after Follain: from Merwin/Romer)  

The sun has washed with white the farm that waits

in ways for the stranger who's late to come,

but he whose force was never sure of home

may not even pause when faced with its gates.

Clothed wholly in the mendicant's threadbare,

his headwear the tin lid of a trashcan,

he will know to announce himself as man

the prodigal: Hey guys it's me!  But where

the mule gnaws roots and the mare's coat burrs dark

and the pig guards the last milk it laps at,—

where the dog has a starred brow and the cat

can augur storms, they have formed their own ark.

Unyielding the response to him must be;

the same it has been since edenity.

Note:

I worked from the Stephen Romer and W. S. Merwin translations of Jean Follain's original.

/
This is one of the "transversions" from my book Homages.

In the case of this poem "by" Jean Follain, I worked from translations by Merwin and Romer (they are appended below).   Reading them, you can see what I've changed or added; in particular how I've "put back in" references to the biblical characters Adam and Noah, which Follain carefully left out.

It may seem odd that I've taken a poem which I assume is not rhymed in the original French version (I don't have the Follain text, but based on every poem of his I've ever seen I'm confident this one is similarly not end-rhymed)—why have I taken a vers libre and done this to it.  

But his poems are often sort of sonnety in their way.  Stephen Romer writes: 

"[Follain's] poems, very rarely more than fifteen lines or so in length, are vignettes . . . "  This is from the Introduction to 20th-Century French Poems (Faber, 2002) edited by Romer (see below for more Romer-on-Follain).  

That "fifteen lines" phrase struck me, and I suddenly wondered if quite a few of Follain's poems could be read as sonnets in subterfuge, and if so why not try doing a transversion in that mode  . . .

/ 

W. S. Merwin:

Welcome

On the farm in its full color

it is on a day of bright sunlight

that one awaits the stranger.

Dressed in fine black fabric

and wearing a top hat

he will push the gate open

saying friends here I am.

The donkey nibbling the blue thistle

the mare in her dark gown

the pig drinking sour milk

the dog with the starred forehead

the cat who can sense a storm

before him will be the same

as in hard Antiquity.

*

/

by Stephen Romer:

Welcome

In the freshly whitewashed farm

it is a sunny day

to be waiting for the stranger.

Clad in thin black cloth

and wearing a top hat

he will push the gate

and say friends here I am.

The donkey grazing on blue thistle

the mare with a dark coat

the pig drinking thin milk

the dog with the starred forehead

the cat sensitive to storms

will be the same before him

as in hard Antiquity.

*

*

Here's Stephen Romer on Follain:

Follain catches the instant and preserves it in aspic, or behind glass that is absolutely transparent: the speaker casts no shadow on his poems, which are rigourously impersonal in presentation—not once does Follain use the personal pronoun 'je', preferring always the neutral 'on'. . . . Perhaps no other poet of the century can suggest, with equal economy, such vertiginous and often desolating temporal perspectives.  Follain is also a crucial figure in providing a viable alternative to Surrealism, which he claimed to 'admire' but knew to be inimical to his own genius. . . . By reasserting the possibility of a poetry anchored in the world, and by inventing a new type of lyric poem, scoured of sentimentality and subjectivity, Jean Follain may prove, indeed, to be the major influence on the best [French] poets of the latter part of the century. . . .

(quoted from pages xxxiii/xxxiv of Romer's introduction to 20th-Century French Poems)

///

one more "feature poem" from defunct blog

/

ALOFT

when the balloon bursts
where does all the air
that was inside go

is it bound together briefly
by the moisture
of the human mouth
that birthed it

poor pouch of breath
long expulsion of nothing you
must dissipate too
nor remain intact
no matter how pantingly
against the outer atmosphere
you might try to secure your
whoosh-hold

and what an effort
what heave and heft-work
what strain of frame what rib-rift
to have to lift to shift around
all that oof and uff 

why strive and huff just
to stave off death
to survive
to be a substance a stuff

to live live as a pocket
a cluster
a cloud
to maintain your interior
mode

I can understand
that having once been
contained in bouyance
you'd want to retain
that rare coherence

you'd pray to stay a one
to remain a unity an
entity a whole in
this unencased heaven

but smatter of ghost 
how can you persist

or save yourself
when all us others disperse

so let it slough
dissolve in draft
little whistlewhiff
pathetic kisspuff
flimsiest flak

up into the sky goes
two lungs worth
of earth
unstrung
unloosed
the exhaled
soul of a boy a girl

alloonaloft
aloftalloon
lost



/
The air we breathe into our bodies keeps us alive of course at least until we expel the final lungsful of it and cease inhaling and die.  But in our lives most of the air we exhale is gone from us and disappears unless we blow it into something of some sort that will hold it for a while, a balloon in this case.  And some people have said that poetry, a poem, can sometimes retain it too.  If poetry is a voiced expression its words are inseparable perhaps from the breath that utters them, and songs are (or were, in earlier centuries) called "airs" . . .  to place one's air into an air that will survive is the ambition of the poet.  The balloon must eventually burst, and the air we blew into it will undergo its transformation (or return) into all the space or void the universe contains within its verse.   
In any case (or lack of it), I think the poem above is not that hard to understand, or I hope it isn't.  Except maybe the last stanza, which is just la la.  The dying mouth finds it difficult to form the complete words of what it's trying to say, and may only express their contour, or in its final entropy be able to pronounce them merely as partial parley.

///

feature poem from defunct blog

/
POEM

Soul to sing of all the Suicide-Ins

of the 1960s and how righteous

to invade the avarice palaces

at Evil Inc or government offices

and from our ponchos raise in unison

rainbow-antic canteens and gulp enough

morphiates for a fatal dose, then call

the media knowing that despite the crowd

ambulances and police arriving

to stomach-pump and IV most of us

back to life, inevitably, in the rushed

roulette of it there'd be casualties,

a few of us would always die each time,

peace we'd cry and keel over wondering,

hoping our perish action gained the eye

of a public busy with headline TV

and cause commuters to sip their coffee

slower, or a mom making breakfast grin,
the kids to hit each other ouch that hurts.

/
Someone emailed me recently about this poem, asking if it was based on real events or if I made it up.  The latter, actually.  The 1960s had Love-Ins and Sit-Ins and Be-Ins and Fillintheblank-Ins, which functioned variously as serious protests (much like the recent "Occupy" demonstrations) or as festival-like occasions, or sometimes both,

but not, as far as I know, Suicide-Ins.

While working on the poem I struggled with the end, wondering if I should present an imaginary contemporary version of a Suicide-In, but finally decided to have it occurring historically in the 1960s (which is why it's "mom" in line 18 rather than the gender-neutral "spouse" it would be if I were depicting a similar scene from today) . . .

//
Here's my addendum-attempt at trying to "update" it— you can see how something of this wouldn't have worked:

contrast with how

a Suicide-In would occur in terms of

today: a thousand poets each in their

lair before an iCam could skype gobble

communal lethal nepenthe in simulcast—

sprawled bards keeling over to protest

the NEA's shameful underfunding

of innovative oilspills, avantdrone missiles and
pocket-nukes, not to mention [........]

P.S.
Actually now I've been thinking about this "mom" in the penultimate line, I think I will change it to "spouse," mostly because of the word "ouch" in the next line.  The rhyme-sound of spouse/ouch works better, and I prefer the gender-neutrality of it also—

and 'spouse' is used in its final version, as it appears in my "Collected Poetry" book—

///

another featurepoem from defunct blog

POETIC LICENSE

When I pick up a new poetry book

I always glance first at the biographical note
If the poet has children I don't read the book

/

This "poem" if you can call it that, is not from any of the books [I've been publishing lately] . . . It is a segment from a book called "Nights of Naomi" which came out in the early 1970s and which I have no fondness for.  I've never reprinted most of the writing in it, and never will.  For me, those pages no longer exist.  If I could push a button and destroy every copy of that book, I would—only of course I don't need such a button, posterity will do the job for me just as utterly as any delete device.  

But as to this particular piece: why did I ever write such nihilist nonsense?  Why would I even think of such a thing to begin with, and then, having hatched it out of spite and envy and hatred of other's happiness in their marriages and parental pleasures and all the loving domesticities life had and has always denied me, having conceived its nasty note, why write it and print it?   My resentment and self-pity at not having, of never having had the opportunity of having, what "everybody else" had, has, a spouse, a marriage, a family— 

So the boy from the orphanage is going to spit at all that which "they"—all those fortunate others—enjoy.  The boy from the orphanage is going to write this "poem" which isn't a poem, but a curse.  And the evil he expresses is his in the end, rebounds on him with the fatal verdict time imposes on his vain vanished and vanishing words.

///

another 'feature' poem from defunct blog

DREAM AMID BED-WOODS

You must pull down sheets from these linen trees,
Blankets too, a pillowcase in full leaf,
But can't: to snooze amidst their fruits, beneath
The sheath of that composite canopy's

Roost, you must raise yourself past hammock heights—
Up where its deepest roots feel doubly sapped,
That dormitory orchard might lie wrapped
And ripe with you, whose foliage still invites

More lure of surface sleep.  But must you trust
The ease in these boughs, the sway of whose loft
So often now wakes vows to never rest,

To somehow remain alow, to resist
All berth above: you must push off this soft
Palleted grove, this tall, forest mattress.

 /
The theme here must be one of the oldest in the human mind.  The creatures from whom we are descended slept in trees, and surely we retain some vestige of that accommodation, far back in our psyches, our collective unconscious.  Children's fascination for and longing to inhabit tree-houses evinces it, and that desire, that urge to slumber up there in our earliest easement does still perhaps overcome us at times, especially in dreams—hence the "dream" of this poem.  Every forest is a dormitory for the atavistic being we're still evolving from, who emerges nightly in search of his true boudoir.  Every woods is a "bedwoods" for the backwoods boy in my brain.  But of course the poem's a sonnet, so it must turn at the volta and struggle against the octave's obsessions, and refute or question its imperatives.  "Must" appears in every stanza, to emphasize the conflict, which in one sense is the deathwish, the wombwish to regress into one's primeval impself.  
The lines are decasyllabic.  Rhyme ABBA CDDC for the quatrains, then EFE EFE for the tercets, but luckily I was able to slant the E's—trust/rest/resist/mattress—which (I thought, and still hope) softened them, slurred them in a sleepytime soundward, as a subliminal counterpoint to the rhetorical assertions of the concluding sentence of this two-sentence poem.

///

feature poem of the week (reprint from defunct blog

SAVE AS: SALVATION

Somewhere is the software to ID all
The snowflakes falling in this storm, but there
Ain't enough RAM crammed in my brain to call
Them forth by name, each crystal character
Putered and programmed, made to have a soul—
And even if I compelled the power
To inscribe them here as equals, in whole
Terms, I would not permit such an error.

But which is which, cries Ms. Ubiq-Unique.
We're not formatted for whiteout.  And when
The screen of your vision freezes in flurries
And the core of this word blizzard hurries
To melt again, to find itself again,
Won't mine be the sign these syllables seek?

/

Is it obvious that this is a debate?  Which the first speaker has already lost, historically— nobody believes anymore in this neoclassical esthetic—as Samuel Johnson summarized it:

"The business of a poet . . . is to examine, not the individual, but the species; to remark  general properties and large appearances: he does not number the streaks of the tulip, or describe the different shades in the verdure of the forest."

Ms. Ubiq-Unique has won the argument long ago.  The individual, every one of us, must have his or her streaks enumerated and displayed in poem after poem, ravin'd till the end of rhyme—  

"Not the individual, but the species."  Those words make me think of the searing sections LIV, LV, LVI from Tennyson's In Memoriam:

"Oh yet we trust that something good," LIV begins, something good will come of our single singular lives, flawed as each of them are with "pangs of nature, sins of will, / Defects of doubt, and taints of blood."  And: "[N]ot one life shall be destroy'd, / Or cast as rubbish to the void, / When God hath made the pile complete."

"So runs my dream," Tennyson confesses: "but what am I? / An infant crying in the night: / An infant crying for the light: / And with no language but a cry."

Is it infantile for human beings to, as LV begins, "wish, that of the living whole / No life may fail beyond the grave"?  Nature, the poem continues, is "So careful of the type . . . / [and yet] So careless of the single life."  

Nature dumpsters us daily, which is why we "wish" that "beyond the grave" each of our unique souls will not "fail": our sole spirits will live on—

(Or as Kobayashi Issa phrased a variant similar lament in the haiku portion of a haibun about his young (child) daughter's death: The world of dew is, yes, a world of dew, but even so (Hiroaki Sato, trans.)  . . .
Another trans. has it: This world of dew / is a world of dew, / and yet . . . and yet . . . . )

at the start of LVI, Nature scoffs back at Tennyson's mourner:

'So careful of the type?'  But no:
From scarped cliff and quarried stone
She cries, 'A thousand types are gone:
I care for nothing, all shall go.

Thou makest thine appeal to me:
I bring to life, I bring to death:
The spirit does but mean the breath:
I know no more.'  And he, shall he,

Man, her last work, who seem'd so fair,
Such splendid purpose in his eyes,
Who roll'd the psalm to wintry skies,
Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer,

Who trusted God was love indeed
And love Creation's final law—
Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shriek'd against his creed—

Who loved, who suffer'd countless ills,
Who battled for the True, the Just,
Be blown about the desert dust,
Or seal'd within the iron hills?

No more?  A monster then, a dream,
A discord.  Dragons of the prime,
That tare each other in their slime,
Were mellow music matched with him.

O life as futile, then, as frail!
O for thy voice to soothe and bless!
What hope of answer, or redress?
Behind the veil, behind the veil.

[Blogger isn't letting me indent the 2nd and 3rd lines of each of Tennyson's stanzas here!]

/
The veil is my snowstorm, if I can justifiably return to my poem above.  I (or my speaker) cannot see beyond that veil to view its parts each flake of which is unique unlike the billions of others that surround it, and therefore is worthy surely of distinction and recognition.  Oh yet we trust that not one life shall be destroy'd and that each spirit ("breath") will find its own azygous zone of salvation.  

But, y'know, if it doesn't get that shot in heaven, then maybe it could get it in a poem? 

But unfortunately a poem is a veil, and the fugitive-living face that would be immortalized in that poem remains featurelessly gauzy—

God won't save the "pile" of us, and even if there is a god (a poet) who someday has the software to perpetuate each planetary entity and every byte of its quintessential nonpareil DNA (assuming the androids cyborgs robots will care to have that happen up there in 2099),

"I would not permit such an error."

Why?  Because I'm Baudelaire, that's why.

No I am not Baudelaire, am an attendant bard, one that will do to swell the head of any mirror he looks into,

but as Michael Hamburger observes, p. 15-16 of his book, The Truth of Poetry (1982),

Baudelaire . . . was an allegorical poet, rather than a Symbolist, [and] most of his poetry conforms to Samuel Johnson's classical prescription that 'the business of a poet is to examine, not the individual, but the species, to remark general properties and large appearances; he does not number the streaks of the tulip, or describe the different shades in the verdure of the forest.  He is to exhibit in his portraits of nature such prominent and striking features, as recall the the original to every mind; and must neglect the minuter discriminations. . . .'

/
Another quote, which I jotted down from somewhere or other:

Walter Benjamin concluded that allegory “is in the realm of thought what ruins are in the realm of things.” 

/
This world of dew is a world of dew: the brief liquid of our life will inevitably evaporate, and even the planet itself will eventually be sumped up by its mortal sun.  Its ruin is no allegory, nor is ours: and yet . . . and yet . . .

// 

feature poem of the week (reprint f

IMP

as i sd to my
darkness sur
always talking i
caught maybellene
at the top
of the hill drive
he sd for christ
sake john why
can't you
be true i sd but
john was
not his name
his name was not
sd his name
no not was
never his
name i was not
his john though
as i was
motivating
over the hill i
saw him come his
cadillac sitting
like a ton
of lead sd sur
why not i caught
john at the top
of christ i
sd christ which
was not his name

maybellene mary
i sd which
was not his come
why can't you be
true drive he
started back do
ing the things
he sd john he
sd christ my
cadillac you
used to do what
can we do
against it why
can't we be
true for christ
sake look out where
yr going john
was not his name

came yr going

not look out
where not his
not no one
to witness to
adjust drive he
maybellene mary
i caught at
the top of the
cross was not
the darkness sur
creeley sur
berry sur
rounds us shall we
and why not
why can't you
be true drive
he sd for
christ sake you
can't be true
why can't can
we do against
and why not buy
maybellene a
goddamn big
car a god
cadillac to
witness and
adjust no
one to drive
he sd for
buy buy look
out why
can't you true
at the top of
the hill as
i sd to my
name which was
not why can't
why can't you
be true

Note: a collage of phrases from Robert Creeley's "I Know a Man" and Chuck Berry's "Maybellene," plus a few from "To Elsie" by William Carlos Williams.

/
—I think this is the only "appropriation" I've done, though on the other hand maybe all my poems are appropriative in the sense that they were influenced by other better poems and are in fact inferior failed versions of what other poets have successfully written.   Anyway, I was reading the Creeley poem for perhaps the hundredth time in my life not long after I had somewhere heard the Berry song and somehow they fused in my mind. And as I worked on the "poem" (not sure you can call it a poem) the lines from Williams arose and seemed 'appropriate' for the content (if you can call it content)  . . .

///

feature poem of the week (reprint from defunct blog)

THE CLIMB

You'll know you've reached the top,
the peak, the moment your bootsoles
go out of sight, since you can only
get there by following yourself up.

Craning your neck to see that trail,
you'll plummet past the hope to scale
any summit if you overtake a guide
whose shadow is you, whose spoor

you are.  Know him as the truer you,
the perfected precursor emitted by
this act of aspiration alone, this try—

stay in his tracks, obey the protocol
of all such quest-stakes, the miracle
no tree-line mars, the height it takes.


/
A quote from Boris Pasternak (source?) has stuck with me for decades: "Everything in the world must excel itself in order to be itself."

Such a difficult daunting commandment.  You aren't yourself when you're yourself.  No: that self must excel itself in order to be itself.  Which means that most of the time I'm not myself, since most of the time I'm not excelling myself, nor do I really desire to excel myself.  I'm fine as I am, thanks.  Besides, the myself that excels myself is not me, surely: it's some alien creature I can barely recognize especially since I can only glimpse his back features from behind as he emerges from me in order to excel me.  I'm just the cringing shell of that real me; the shed shadow of that supernumerary who excels where I fail—

the fact that he isn't real is no alleviation from the agony of having to project his imaginary imago— there's no downtime from the daily drudgery of propping up and pushing this fantasy figure out in front of me like a puppet copular, a paper hero.  The schizophrenia that always accompanies achievement, even if that achievement is nothing more than the pauper's act of finishing a poem, when you know it wasn't really you that did it, it wasn't you yourself that brushed your teeth and combed your hair, it was your excelself.   Your excelself, that betterhalf who does everything while you lie on the couch watching reruns of off the shelf.

///

feature poem of the week

somehow in my collating and editing, this poem got lost from the "Collected Sonnets" print edition —:

SALOME SALAD

those veils you shed

make any eye

weep their beauty

even kings have cried

striptease finished

these whorls can spice

like pearls of pubis

the headiest dish

every sainted john

would love to sate

his tongue in castrate

communion on

your bitter plate

sweet onion

/

Today I suddenly remembered this sonnet and when I couldn't find it in the current collected sonnets print edition, I used "finder" to look for it, and found it—and also came across this posting of drafts from an earlier blog:

September 29, 2008

today's drafts

*

SALOME

those veils you shed

make even me

the tyrant Herod

weep for beauty

striptease done     /  striptease finished

these pearls can garnish

their curls upon      / their curls along

the headiest dish

here every sainted John

envies my evil state

and converts his tongue / faith

to take communion

from your bitter plate  

sweet onion

/

striptease finished

these pearls can garnish

their curls along

the headiest dish

here every sainted John

converts his tongue

and joins my evil state   / to my evil state

to take communion on     /and takes/finds communion on

your bitter plate

sweet onion

/

here every sainted John

envies my evil reign

and finds communion

[                 /] salivate

*

salivate  /  fate  /  state / plate   / wait

/

here I salivate

over every sainted John

and convert his tongue   / and use his tongue

to take communion

from your bitter plate

sweet onion

/striptease done  / stripteased finished

these pearls can garnish   / can allocate

their curls upon   / their curls to garnish

the headiest dish     / the headiest plate

/here every sainted John

envies my evil fate          /envies my evil wish

and converts his tongue

to take communion

from your bitter plate    / bitter dish

sweet onion

\

/striptease finished

these pearls can [    -ate]

their curls to garnish

the headiest plate

/here every sainted John

envies my evil throne

and converts his palate

to take communion

from your bitter plate

sweet onion

/here every sainted John

envies my evil fate   / evil reign

and converts his tongue

to take communion

from your blessed plate   / from your bitter plate

sweet onion

/

here every sainted John

will join my evil state   /  will join my evil bond

and convert his palate   /convert his palate

to seek communion     / and seek communion

from your blessed plate

sweet onion

*

/here every sainted John

will convert to evil   / will join my

and come to this table

to seek communion

*

/here heretic John

and every Judas Pilate

will join my salad palate   will join my evil state

and seek communion from

your blessed plate

sweet onion

*

/here heretic John

and every Judas Pilate

converts his palate  /will convert his palate

for tart communion    /to seek communion

/and seeks communion

from your blessed plate    /  on this blessed plate

sweet onion

*

/here heretic John

and every Judas Pilate

will join me/ my palate  /my palate salad

to seek communion

/

here heretic John

and every Judas Pilate

transubstantiate

their tongues for communion

from your blessed plate

sweet onion

/

every heretic John

will convert his palate

every Judas Pilate

seek your communion  / seeks communion

on this blessed plate   /from this blessed plate

sweet onion

/

here heretic John

converts his palate

every Judas Pilate

seeks communion from

your blessed plate

sweet onion

/

here heretic John

and every Judas Pilate

seeks communion from

and converts his tongue upon

your blessed plate

sweet onion

/striptease finished

your pearls can garnish

their curls

*

/for blessed communion

on your tart plate

*

/striptease done

these/those curls will garnish  / all garnish  / can garnish

[/your pearls can garnish

their curls upon]

/their pearls upon

the headiest dish

/striptease done

let your pearls garnish

their curls upon

the headiest dish

[/SALOME SALAD]

/every heretic John

shall transubstantiate

his palate

in/with this communion

sweet onion

/let/here heretic John

every Judas Pilate

convert his palate

for tart communion

every heretic John

will convert his palate  

/would convert / would judas his palate

(every Judas and Pilate)

to find communion

with this blessed plate

every heretic John

will convert his tongue  / convert his palate

and seek communion

on this blessed plate

each heretic John

converts his palate

to seek communion

on this blessed plate

sweet onion

shall steep his palate

transubstantiate

with your communion  /  union

in this blessed union

shall transubstantiate

his palate tongue

in this blessed union  / communion

will convert his con

/and on your plate   / and from each plate

my palate     /  my palate tongue

will join the heretic John

and lap you up   / tongue  / and lap you long

in this benediction /  communion

sweet onion

/transumption /   transubstantiation

shall transubstantiate

my palate

/every heretic John

shall profess your tang /

and simmer long

in this communion

/the heretic head will garnish

your plate sweet onion

striptease done

shall your pearls garnish

my heretic tongue

the headiest dish

your plate sweet onion

the vilest dish

the heretic John

shall decorate

your plate

until my palate

tastes your curls

sweet onion

*

*

September 30, 2008

today's drafts

*

*

SALOME

those veils you shed

have made every eye

weep for beauty

even Herod cried

/those veils you shed

make even me  / make even the eye

the tyrant Herod   /of tyrant Herod

weep for beauty

/those veils you shed

make every eye

even vile Herod  / every vile herod / like vile Herod

/see vile Herod  / of vile Herod  / a vile Herod

weep for beauty

/those veils you shed

make every eye

weep for beauty

even/like vile Herod

/striptease finished

these curls can spice

like pearls of pubis

the headiest dish

/striptease finished

these curls can ooze  / cooze  / can pubis

the headiest dish

this side of Jesus

/striptease done

these pearls can garnish

their curls upon     

the headiest dish

/every sainted john  / every sainted one

before he pass the gate  / passes on

would take/lap communion

and lick apostate   /shall lick apostate

your labial plate

sweet onion

/every lopped off john

/every sainted john

would apostate

his tongue castrate

to find communion on

/would love to sate

his tongue in castrate  prostrate  / his tongue in slit  / monstrate

communion on

/would apostate

his tongue to find

communion on

your castrate plate

sweet onion

/each apostate john

would love to sate

his tongue in castrate

communion on

your labial plate

sweet onion

/every castrate john

would apostate

his tongue to join   /to sate

communion on

your labial plate

sweet onion

/every sainted one

envies my evil crown/throne

and would apostate

his tongue to stait   / sate

the comunion

of your bitter plate

sweet onion

/every sainted john

would apostate

his tongue to sate   /  mate/prate/

communion at

your savory plate

sweet onion

/every sainted john

before he pass the gate

would heretic

his tongue to lick

your labial plate

sweet onion

/ hesitate  /  strait  

/every sainted john

longs to lick this strait  / longs to strait this gate

/longs to lap your strait

and take communion

at your

/longs to bear my crown  / reign / throne

and would apostate

his tongue to crown

/every sainted john

before his tongue is done

longs to taste apostate

and lick communion

from your labial plate

sweet onion

/every sainted John

shall apostate

his tongue palate

for communion  /to seek communion

at your bitter plate

sweet onion

*

here every sainted John

envies my evil state

and converts his tongue / faith

to take communion

from your bitter plate  

sweet onion

/

striptease finished

these pearls can garnish

their curls along

the headiest dish

here every sainted John

converts his tongue

and joins my evil state   / to my evil state

to take communion on     /and takes/finds communion on

your bitter plate

sweet onion

/

here every sainted John

envies my evil reign

and finds communion

[                 /] salivate

*

salivate  /  fate  /  state / plate   / wait

/

here I salivate

over every sainted John

and convert his tongue   / and use his tongue

to take communion

from your bitter plate

sweet onion

/striptease done  / stripteased finished

these pearls can garnish   / can allocate

their curls upon   / their curls to garnish

the headiest dish     / the headiest plate

/here every sainted John

envies my evil fate          /envies my evil wish

and converts his tongue

to take communion

from your bitter plate    / bitter dish

sweet onion

\

/striptease finished

these pearls can [    -ate]

their curls to garnish

the headiest plate

/here every sainted John

envies my evil throne

and converts his palate

to take communion

from your bitter plate

sweet onion

/here every sainted John

envies my evil fate   / evil reign

and converts his tongue

to take communion

from your blessed plate   / from your bitter plate

sweet onion

/

here every sainted John

will join my evil state   /  will join my evil bond

and convert his palate   /convert his palate

to seek communion     / and seek communion

from your blessed plate

sweet onion

*

/here every sainted John

will convert to evil   / will join my

and come to this table

to seek communion

*

/here heretic John

and every Judas Pilate

will join my salad palate   will join my evil state

and seek communion from

your blessed plate

sweet onion

*

/here heretic John

and every Judas Pilate

converts his palate  /will convert his palate

for tart communion    /to seek communion

/and seeks communion

from your blessed plate    /  on this blessed plate

sweet onion

*

/here heretic John

and every Judas Pilate

will join me/ my palate  /my palate salad

to seek communion

/

here heretic John

and every Judas Pilate

transubstantiate

their tongues for communion

from your blessed plate

sweet onion

/

every heretic John

will convert his palate

every Judas Pilate

seek your communion  / seeks communion

on this blessed plate   /from this blessed plate

sweet onion

/

here heretic John

converts his palate

every Judas Pilate

seeks communion from

your blessed plate

sweet onion

/

here heretic John

and every Judas Pilate

seeks communion from

and converts his tongue upon

your blessed plate

sweet onion

/striptease finished

your pearls can garnish

their curls

*

/for blessed communion

on your tart plate

*

/striptease done

these/those curls will garnish  / all garnish  / can garnish

[/your pearls can garnish

their curls upon]

/their pearls upon

the headiest dish

/striptease done

let your pearls garnish

their curls upon

the headiest dish

[/SALOME SALAD]

/every heretic John

shall transubstantiate

his palate

in/with this communion

sweet onion

/let/here heretic John

every Judas Pilate

convert his palate

for tart communion

every heretic John

will convert his palate  

/would convert / would judas his palate

(every Judas and Pilate)

to find communion

with this blessed plate

every heretic John

will convert his tongue  / convert his palate

and seek communion

on this blessed plate

each heretic John

converts his palate

to seek communion

on this blessed plate

sweet onion

shall steep his palate

transubstantiate

with your communion  /  union

in this blessed union

shall transubstantiate

his palate tongue

in this blessed union  / communion

will convert his con

/and on your plate   / and from each plate

my palate     /  my palate tongue

will join the heretic John

and lap you up   / tongue  / and lap you long

in this benediction /  communion

sweet onion

/transumption /   transubstantiation

shall transubstantiate

my palate

/every heretic John

shall profess your tang /

and simmer long

in this communion

/the heretic head will garnish

your plate sweet onion

striptease done

shall your pearls garnish

my heretic tongue

the headiest dish

your plate sweet onion

the vilest dish

the heretic John

shall decorate

your plate

until my palate

tastes your curls

sweet onion

*

*

///