Over the many voices
filling our electric world with simple thoughts,
wafting arguments over movie stars and dinner,
I hear a pure voice, her Queen's English
and open soul draws me, makes me want
to sing a thousand songs my life
held back like a breaching dam, not whole
not even wanting to hold anymore.
I was trained in the perfect cadence;
a language only of the mind who turns art into pain,
creativity into lost books too distant
to hold a name like mine. Hers is the voice
tearing open those books, shouting
"I am here and I love; I want to love all
without definitions, not as possession our world
programs us to have from early age:
Barbie-mine. Boyfriend-mine. Husband-mine."
Once in my life I would have wanted her
as my possession, my perfect wife retired from
all the world's view as a secret. Then, as if
from a prescient siren I wrote
"No one owns the sky" and there she was,
as if I asked for proof of my own words
and Providence stepped in and said "Here.
This is what you meant." I hold a mirror
to my face, looking at a reflection aged
from years of battle with the world, years of
silence imposed by me borne of dread
or fear that I would become a wastrel, lost
singing songs only to myself and a cheap bottle
that would give me life until it killed me.
As I write again, the reflection changes,
the young hopeful man I was comes back
with fanfare of words I never thought I'd compose.
You are my muse now, through your openness
I let in many I would have shied from much like
a bunny shies from human touch. We may love one day.
Passions enrapting us finding perfection in
sexual desire not by any definition but
just as nature would have it in itself.
I would never want to own you, never place
the yolk of culture that holds silent
the million million voices who want to sing but cannot.
You are the air that gave me back
the youth of song I almost put away like baseball cards,
each capturing an image too high to be reached.
You are the courage that scares away
the demons long held in fear of rejection.
You are my friend, my friend, and in that
whatever time or the world hands me belongs
to all. We have written together too and
in that duet I found the voice long buried and forgotten.
You are you. And thank you for that.
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
Sunday, May 1, 2011
ELIZABETH IN THIS LIFE circa 1980
An emulation of love, a desire
which is familiar but not to her
keeps her here. With me or you
she is an actress whose auditions
are prepared to shock the audience
even if their not listening. These colors
in her hair know me somehow, and you
would know them too as a piece of death
that is simple. Simplicity of sight
and a want to be with others is nothing
but a fool's logic and her
bylaw. Keep me for days she says, as if
the men returning on the subway
want to be there. In this life Elizabeth
would return to you, the vaginal return
and Saturn's pull are announcements
of stops the train no longer uses.
A policeman stops her on the platform
and tells her of wanton fish in the deli,
and a sex that no one wants
to pull off; she would answer him
with a stare of decades he
hasn't lived through as the train
shoots by. This stop has been closed
since the forties but she waits for something
that has nothing to do with her.
which is familiar but not to her
keeps her here. With me or you
she is an actress whose auditions
are prepared to shock the audience
even if their not listening. These colors
in her hair know me somehow, and you
would know them too as a piece of death
that is simple. Simplicity of sight
and a want to be with others is nothing
but a fool's logic and her
bylaw. Keep me for days she says, as if
the men returning on the subway
want to be there. In this life Elizabeth
would return to you, the vaginal return
and Saturn's pull are announcements
of stops the train no longer uses.
A policeman stops her on the platform
and tells her of wanton fish in the deli,
and a sex that no one wants
to pull off; she would answer him
with a stare of decades he
hasn't lived through as the train
shoots by. This stop has been closed
since the forties but she waits for something
that has nothing to do with her.
Friday, April 29, 2011
THE WINTER BORN circa 1984
(author's note, this is my first attempt at a longpoem. It was the basis for my later work Fear of Butterflies)
To have humanism we must be convinced of our humanity. As we move further into decadence this becomes more difficult. --Thomas Pynchon
Tradition is only the history of failure.
As things happen world is and we are not
the rapid color or unfinished stanza. We swing
around loose trees as they swing
in earth's cadences. Here it is, I said,
here are the dancers naked around the trees
and us. They could dance with pieces of world
and we could cross the living room.
In transparent time it snows everywhere, I said,
as it was snowing when we held
watch to our children's faces.
She reaches for an apple in winter.
She cannot be disturbed. I recall snow
and it returns for this occasion, but it
does not fall, it cannot
retrace the steps of our descent.
I think of you in her place;
I think of you in my place
with vines purely wrapped around our nervous
systems. She jumps away. She is
standing now smaller with the streetlight
and sleeps in counterpoint to our divinations.
Hanson the Clown is sleeping
in a world whose earth
is only a passing fancy. He stumbles
through our lives finding his heart
under the bleachers. He is spotlight
and is buried along with our illuminations.
We, you and I, see him not
as a tornshirt mannequin of our generation;
lime burning behind us, we are only to him
a regiment of tightrope walkers, changing little
while they move from ring to ring.
I hold my watch to a child's face.
I hold your eyesight with the watch between.
A wheel too familiar turns through
a blue line of sky. You are gone.
Now the world outside loads language on the wheel
and it turns to a poem no one had written.
Like an arrogant ballroom with music,
no one's poem is white to the air
as it is rewritten. There you are, I said,
and you stand behind the last hedge
to copy what everyone would copy.
She wakes and walks aloud
to the first window as light
disappears into light. She is trusting
the passionate fading of stars
and is alone as the sun is alone
with night behind. She is thinking
morning as it opens
under the street's blunted light.
She is seeing weather start around her.
We are moving from ring to ring.
he is moving through us, lives
within his red circles around his sight
of us. He sees through a series of wires
patches and randoms
of greasepaints we would imagine
and cannot. Hanson thinks
and those thoughts become the accusations
we could live with. He is thinking
as it rains through the parking lot.
I copy what you might copy.
You tell me of a quiet accident,
an accenting of words found at best
near the bookstore. I said
Why is there a foreign world. Why
is there earth and air, water and fire,
and a distinction of relationships?
Why do they sleep under automobiles? You said
Look at us in this angle of candlelight
through the large window.
Look at us looking at the others.
Arrogance of a neutral color
weather of various origin and she
stands on the sidewalk
to hold them together. She is imagining
us, thinking that we would think
not of her and her incarnations of light
and dark around our primal world.
She is dreaming and we dream for her
a world without cacophony
on an earth without geography. Here it is,
here is the setting for your current life.
Winter comes to Hanson to find him
with the family. He is drinking again,
they would say and not
like a family but like a group of
fish, swimming away from the dead
mackerel. He is drinking. The circus closed
down years ago and he
cannot dress for the occasion. He cannot
think and not think of their limitations
and his here, under the angels
of Weinachten. he is drinking.
Why are you afraid of the window
you said. Why are you not looking
at others whose lives are certainly
interesting. Look at the way she decorates
the tree, not like a tree, but a winter
away from her, a winter without evening
but night. Here it is, I said,
here we live and not live
in various living rooms. Here.
Tradition is only the history of failure
we'd say, and look to the outside.
To have humanism we must be convinced of our humanity. As we move further into decadence this becomes more difficult. --Thomas Pynchon
Tradition is only the history of failure.
As things happen world is and we are not
the rapid color or unfinished stanza. We swing
around loose trees as they swing
in earth's cadences. Here it is, I said,
here are the dancers naked around the trees
and us. They could dance with pieces of world
and we could cross the living room.
In transparent time it snows everywhere, I said,
as it was snowing when we held
watch to our children's faces.
She reaches for an apple in winter.
She cannot be disturbed. I recall snow
and it returns for this occasion, but it
does not fall, it cannot
retrace the steps of our descent.
I think of you in her place;
I think of you in my place
with vines purely wrapped around our nervous
systems. She jumps away. She is
standing now smaller with the streetlight
and sleeps in counterpoint to our divinations.
Hanson the Clown is sleeping
in a world whose earth
is only a passing fancy. He stumbles
through our lives finding his heart
under the bleachers. He is spotlight
and is buried along with our illuminations.
We, you and I, see him not
as a tornshirt mannequin of our generation;
lime burning behind us, we are only to him
a regiment of tightrope walkers, changing little
while they move from ring to ring.
I hold my watch to a child's face.
I hold your eyesight with the watch between.
A wheel too familiar turns through
a blue line of sky. You are gone.
Now the world outside loads language on the wheel
and it turns to a poem no one had written.
Like an arrogant ballroom with music,
no one's poem is white to the air
as it is rewritten. There you are, I said,
and you stand behind the last hedge
to copy what everyone would copy.
She wakes and walks aloud
to the first window as light
disappears into light. She is trusting
the passionate fading of stars
and is alone as the sun is alone
with night behind. She is thinking
morning as it opens
under the street's blunted light.
She is seeing weather start around her.
We are moving from ring to ring.
he is moving through us, lives
within his red circles around his sight
of us. He sees through a series of wires
patches and randoms
of greasepaints we would imagine
and cannot. Hanson thinks
and those thoughts become the accusations
we could live with. He is thinking
as it rains through the parking lot.
I copy what you might copy.
You tell me of a quiet accident,
an accenting of words found at best
near the bookstore. I said
Why is there a foreign world. Why
is there earth and air, water and fire,
and a distinction of relationships?
Why do they sleep under automobiles? You said
Look at us in this angle of candlelight
through the large window.
Look at us looking at the others.
Arrogance of a neutral color
weather of various origin and she
stands on the sidewalk
to hold them together. She is imagining
us, thinking that we would think
not of her and her incarnations of light
and dark around our primal world.
She is dreaming and we dream for her
a world without cacophony
on an earth without geography. Here it is,
here is the setting for your current life.
Winter comes to Hanson to find him
with the family. He is drinking again,
they would say and not
like a family but like a group of
fish, swimming away from the dead
mackerel. He is drinking. The circus closed
down years ago and he
cannot dress for the occasion. He cannot
think and not think of their limitations
and his here, under the angels
of Weinachten. he is drinking.
Why are you afraid of the window
you said. Why are you not looking
at others whose lives are certainly
interesting. Look at the way she decorates
the tree, not like a tree, but a winter
away from her, a winter without evening
but night. Here it is, I said,
here we live and not live
in various living rooms. Here.
Tradition is only the history of failure
we'd say, and look to the outside.
Sunday, April 24, 2011
MEETING PEOPLE circa 1974
(author's note, this was my first published work from when I was in high school)
We wave at others
Apologetically. The harm that lives
With us, like a promise of sleep
And good money, stares off into the blue air
While nightmares become,
For the six-year-old behind the wall,
Home for darkness
And this life. We walk into the ground. Others
Cannot follow us home
And do. We must have met there.
The wind becomes warmer
And Wednesday spreads over the airplane
While down here eyes turn toward the echoes above
And are happy. Maybe
Winter will end soon, with
Explosions of color where the dead stood
Afraid of something. The whispers on the parking lot
Become the only framework to run from.
We wave at others
Apologetically. The harm that lives
With us, like a promise of sleep
And good money, stares off into the blue air
While nightmares become,
For the six-year-old behind the wall,
Home for darkness
And this life. We walk into the ground. Others
Cannot follow us home
And do. We must have met there.
The wind becomes warmer
And Wednesday spreads over the airplane
While down here eyes turn toward the echoes above
And are happy. Maybe
Winter will end soon, with
Explosions of color where the dead stood
Afraid of something. The whispers on the parking lot
Become the only framework to run from.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
WORSHIP circa 1986
...as a part of the dream she is wearing stockings,
dark, as her Theda Bara eyes were dark and silent.
Raising her leg with a motion like wind I kiss
the tips of each toe with a breathless touch.
Their movement under my lips were at turns
basic and complex as a watch running just slow enough
to reflect humanity but on time enough
to be perfect. The movement to her arch
may have been measured in hours or seconds
or in the wings a young bird begins to use
for her first flight from home. Her calf muscles
began to tighten under my lip’s caresses, ever
so slowly I encircle in tongue motions
the inches of sinewy silk encased skin with a smile
matching hers, eyes meeting, closing in unison.
Behind the knee so soft, the silk moving, tightening,
then loosening her calf closes to my back
drawing me nearer to the origin of the lives
that would come one day. But not now.
...‘More?’ in dream I would whisper, or wish I had,
she moves with a silence saying yes
as Molly Bloom would have said in the book
I forgot to read for class next morning. Thighs begin
a slight dew drawing through the silk, the sweet
salt of her mist coating my mouth like
a thin primer of paint placed to canvas before
the masterpiece would be created. The motion
from silk to skin mid thigh was seamless, a perfection,
a transition from the work of eastern moths
to the work of human evolution ever changing.
She moaned slightly, on cue, a symphony of one
each tone measured through years of experience
but tempered as every new performance
would humanize it. I moved, as a mouse to food would,
silent, wanting, finding sustenance in her deepest self.
The mouth I speak with meets the mouth
she loves with, a uniting, her legs
wrapping my shoulder like a present
the gift of her quivers, her tastes
the nectar of her passions becoming mine
forever as I am born in the light passion creates
and donates to every morning.
...in the next part of the dream she is nursing me,
I being reborn in the light of her quivering brilliance.
Not milk but emotion feeds me each kiss
from breast to breast I envision my life;
each part, each phase, years become moments:
first toy first kiss first disappointment first renewal...
First Light! The sun draws me from the dream,
the woman beside me sleeping in peace
a soundness as still as a star would be.
Always there, always shining. I stumble in awakeness,
bed creaks with my humanity moving
into culture into identity, the day’s pending realities
blurring and un blurring as I fumble to water
to awaken what dreams would quiet and create.
I look up, hanging with a smile behind me, face
wet with cold water and surprise:
her stockings.
dark, as her Theda Bara eyes were dark and silent.
Raising her leg with a motion like wind I kiss
the tips of each toe with a breathless touch.
Their movement under my lips were at turns
basic and complex as a watch running just slow enough
to reflect humanity but on time enough
to be perfect. The movement to her arch
may have been measured in hours or seconds
or in the wings a young bird begins to use
for her first flight from home. Her calf muscles
began to tighten under my lip’s caresses, ever
so slowly I encircle in tongue motions
the inches of sinewy silk encased skin with a smile
matching hers, eyes meeting, closing in unison.
Behind the knee so soft, the silk moving, tightening,
then loosening her calf closes to my back
drawing me nearer to the origin of the lives
that would come one day. But not now.
...‘More?’ in dream I would whisper, or wish I had,
she moves with a silence saying yes
as Molly Bloom would have said in the book
I forgot to read for class next morning. Thighs begin
a slight dew drawing through the silk, the sweet
salt of her mist coating my mouth like
a thin primer of paint placed to canvas before
the masterpiece would be created. The motion
from silk to skin mid thigh was seamless, a perfection,
a transition from the work of eastern moths
to the work of human evolution ever changing.
She moaned slightly, on cue, a symphony of one
each tone measured through years of experience
but tempered as every new performance
would humanize it. I moved, as a mouse to food would,
silent, wanting, finding sustenance in her deepest self.
The mouth I speak with meets the mouth
she loves with, a uniting, her legs
wrapping my shoulder like a present
the gift of her quivers, her tastes
the nectar of her passions becoming mine
forever as I am born in the light passion creates
and donates to every morning.
...in the next part of the dream she is nursing me,
I being reborn in the light of her quivering brilliance.
Not milk but emotion feeds me each kiss
from breast to breast I envision my life;
each part, each phase, years become moments:
first toy first kiss first disappointment first renewal...
First Light! The sun draws me from the dream,
the woman beside me sleeping in peace
a soundness as still as a star would be.
Always there, always shining. I stumble in awakeness,
bed creaks with my humanity moving
into culture into identity, the day’s pending realities
blurring and un blurring as I fumble to water
to awaken what dreams would quiet and create.
I look up, hanging with a smile behind me, face
wet with cold water and surprise:
her stockings.
DEPARTURES from 1981, an early piece
for Judi Baba
i
There is a sandstorm
and a mermaid.
We were putting away
the hourglasses
and counting
places at the table...
how many there were!
and how many
mermaids
were caught in the sand.
ii
She denied the feathers
of harder crows. They
walked away with the silverware
iii
Backgrounds
for bad movies
we pretended...
skating across our excitement
just like that--the
push off--the
penalty box. We
were ready.
Our white socks
were ready.
iv
Gone from the table,
expected by
someone with large eyes.
v
Later, the weather
soared pat the station wagon
and rested.
Our best lives
passed the alkaloid
tests--red paper
falling into blue
around us. Like
the mermaid. Like
the sandstorm.
vi
Handsome, she thought,
growing models of named birds
in the backyard.
vii
Coincidence.
Or the lack of it.
We could have waked away.
The expected
icicles
were hand-me-downs
covering worn
surrounding day. The air
was cracking
into white angles.
viii
We swore
at the green shadows
following us. As always.
ix
Here,
on the bridge
of the rented maiden ship
we met few
prospective survivors.
We were ever-so-festive:
ours were
gabardine lives
of severest blue.
The grey mon dieu of pennants.
x
Even as we speak
apricot trees are dropping
large nested pheasants.
xi
Everything
is in season. Every
summer we walk
this on out
over and over.
When the intervening world
hands out tablecloths
would we want
stripes? Would we
want the mermaid?
xii
We counted
the hourglasses. And the mermaid.
And the sandstorm.
i
There is a sandstorm
and a mermaid.
We were putting away
the hourglasses
and counting
places at the table...
how many there were!
and how many
mermaids
were caught in the sand.
ii
She denied the feathers
of harder crows. They
walked away with the silverware
iii
Backgrounds
for bad movies
we pretended...
skating across our excitement
just like that--the
push off--the
penalty box. We
were ready.
Our white socks
were ready.
iv
Gone from the table,
expected by
someone with large eyes.
v
Later, the weather
soared pat the station wagon
and rested.
Our best lives
passed the alkaloid
tests--red paper
falling into blue
around us. Like
the mermaid. Like
the sandstorm.
vi
Handsome, she thought,
growing models of named birds
in the backyard.
vii
Coincidence.
Or the lack of it.
We could have waked away.
The expected
icicles
were hand-me-downs
covering worn
surrounding day. The air
was cracking
into white angles.
viii
We swore
at the green shadows
following us. As always.
ix
Here,
on the bridge
of the rented maiden ship
we met few
prospective survivors.
We were ever-so-festive:
ours were
gabardine lives
of severest blue.
The grey mon dieu of pennants.
x
Even as we speak
apricot trees are dropping
large nested pheasants.
xi
Everything
is in season. Every
summer we walk
this on out
over and over.
When the intervening world
hands out tablecloths
would we want
stripes? Would we
want the mermaid?
xii
We counted
the hourglasses. And the mermaid.
And the sandstorm.
Sunday, March 20, 2011
STILL LIFE WITH LIFE
Lightning strikes like bad news and is gone.
A photograph may hold it, keep it fast
a voyeur of sorts, collecting quick
a fury dispersed and ragged
defusing the moment into specks of unconnected color.
The tree struck by the bolt never feels
the basis of it's electricity, the overhead mechanics,
winds random buffeting driving power below,
into unknown targets white light pinpoint and finds.
Rain comes too, an afterthought of sorts,
a dream that amazes & terrifies before
it's gone. Darkness fades into lightness
slowly, the rain abates and returns as mist, subtle
touching briefly, then gone.
On the tree a cocoon shakes, opens slowly,
the brown and olive wings of the moth begin
their slow assent to reveal the eye like marks
her wings display. The ancients believed these moths
were allies, Angels of the dead who return
in moments of trial to guide us
away from the unhealthy spirits of ego & chaos.
The moth moves slowly at first, it’s body
heavy with reality; the wings too new to hold
a wind in control but they grow to
feel and rise above the air in a moment.
Freedom becomes her instinctual target, the light
she heads toward above glowing bright then dim
as clouds obscure sun’s passionate fire.
No one owns the sky.
The planets & stars do not come
with deeds of title. The moths and butterflies
belong to those only in the moment they are seen.
Possession is not the way of all things. Only
humans limit themselves this way, a mantle
of sorts, carried with discomfort and yet
all too present. We define ourselves by what we do,
not who we are, running with fear from others scorn,
we censor ourselves to degrees so deep we cannot
recognize the backward image in the morning mirror.
This is folly of our own arrogance, our fear of separation
from the basis of a nature we were taught to control
but can’t. No one can do that. You
have stepped above those foolish definitions, the
possession of others as a tool to fight our own
shortcomings. The ancients had many words for love,
paternal, romantic, sexual, familial, all were different concepts,
not wrapped in one word or one sad need to grasp
what was never meant to be grasped. You are right;
you are the moth whose eye marked wings
carry the body of reality high above us frightened
animals. No one can own you entire.
No one can own anyone entire, yet that pursuit is always
the lingering foolishness that keeps us away
from the deep passions the knowledge of others
would build in ourselves. Fly, always fly, little Angel,
touch here only when the land feels no storm from above.
A photograph may hold it, keep it fast
a voyeur of sorts, collecting quick
a fury dispersed and ragged
defusing the moment into specks of unconnected color.
The tree struck by the bolt never feels
the basis of it's electricity, the overhead mechanics,
winds random buffeting driving power below,
into unknown targets white light pinpoint and finds.
Rain comes too, an afterthought of sorts,
a dream that amazes & terrifies before
it's gone. Darkness fades into lightness
slowly, the rain abates and returns as mist, subtle
touching briefly, then gone.
On the tree a cocoon shakes, opens slowly,
the brown and olive wings of the moth begin
their slow assent to reveal the eye like marks
her wings display. The ancients believed these moths
were allies, Angels of the dead who return
in moments of trial to guide us
away from the unhealthy spirits of ego & chaos.
The moth moves slowly at first, it’s body
heavy with reality; the wings too new to hold
a wind in control but they grow to
feel and rise above the air in a moment.
Freedom becomes her instinctual target, the light
she heads toward above glowing bright then dim
as clouds obscure sun’s passionate fire.
No one owns the sky.
The planets & stars do not come
with deeds of title. The moths and butterflies
belong to those only in the moment they are seen.
Possession is not the way of all things. Only
humans limit themselves this way, a mantle
of sorts, carried with discomfort and yet
all too present. We define ourselves by what we do,
not who we are, running with fear from others scorn,
we censor ourselves to degrees so deep we cannot
recognize the backward image in the morning mirror.
This is folly of our own arrogance, our fear of separation
from the basis of a nature we were taught to control
but can’t. No one can do that. You
have stepped above those foolish definitions, the
possession of others as a tool to fight our own
shortcomings. The ancients had many words for love,
paternal, romantic, sexual, familial, all were different concepts,
not wrapped in one word or one sad need to grasp
what was never meant to be grasped. You are right;
you are the moth whose eye marked wings
carry the body of reality high above us frightened
animals. No one can own you entire.
No one can own anyone entire, yet that pursuit is always
the lingering foolishness that keeps us away
from the deep passions the knowledge of others
would build in ourselves. Fly, always fly, little Angel,
touch here only when the land feels no storm from above.
Sunday, March 6, 2011
DENISE circa 1997 an old piece with a colorful story
DENISE
They say that only children dream in color.
The world doesn't strike them, they are
sailing away and towards them
the deepening innocence that only fails
when earth becomes world and world
does not become us. In their dreams people touch
like a kiss or the sound of a calliope:
it's off-key rhythms forgiven to anticipate
the sweaty-hued clowns of their personal circuses.
For you it may have been the ice-cream man:
the summer rituals becoming a flower
picked for its discrete charm or maybe
because we want to remember it
before it remembers us. The things we want
reflect not our immediate desires
but rather a passage through which
the call our histories could take
to bring us home.
Your mother may have known that, too: in a tavern
we unwrap our facades, our definitions
of who and why, the indifferent differences
that keep us away from ourselves
and each other. She may have thought of you at school,
plaid pleated skirts and the nuns running
and running away, the furtherance of God's purpose
or their innocence long found and lost
keeping them going. She may have seen you at twenty,
miniskirted and knowing everything,
reefer, boyfriends, the angst felt and not felt
for the passing of childhood or the games
not played or won or lost. She may have seen you at thirty,
young mother, the nervous confidence
and your children's tears caught fast in an instant
and held like buds on a young tree
planted in the heart. She may have seen you
all at once, in a colorful dream
when she left.
When my mother died 13 people came to the service
not speaking to each other; a real or imagined
past, slights of rejection and anger,
the noble ignominies of a lost faith. I learned
to love from friends, lovers, the distant stare
my generations taught me gave way in inches
coming back like a poor relation taking
the best and worst from me. Loss becomes something
like a collection of insects, flying around
as we take and lose what is valued
only when something is given and found;
we miss those most who touch and hold
the fragile dragonflies of the heart.
And here we are the products of our selves;
what we are given is what we will become,
what we will become is what we have given
and kept, our identities only the ill-fitting masks
made by a tailor who lost his shop years ago.
In you it's the eyes of your children, your friends,
the momentary touches of color our dreams should have.
Keep them always; they will show you an infinity
that will come as a kiss when it finally happens.
They say that only children dream in color.
The world doesn't strike them, they are
sailing away and towards them
the deepening innocence that only fails
when earth becomes world and world
does not become us. In their dreams people touch
like a kiss or the sound of a calliope:
it's off-key rhythms forgiven to anticipate
the sweaty-hued clowns of their personal circuses.
For you it may have been the ice-cream man:
the summer rituals becoming a flower
picked for its discrete charm or maybe
because we want to remember it
before it remembers us. The things we want
reflect not our immediate desires
but rather a passage through which
the call our histories could take
to bring us home.
Your mother may have known that, too: in a tavern
we unwrap our facades, our definitions
of who and why, the indifferent differences
that keep us away from ourselves
and each other. She may have thought of you at school,
plaid pleated skirts and the nuns running
and running away, the furtherance of God's purpose
or their innocence long found and lost
keeping them going. She may have seen you at twenty,
miniskirted and knowing everything,
reefer, boyfriends, the angst felt and not felt
for the passing of childhood or the games
not played or won or lost. She may have seen you at thirty,
young mother, the nervous confidence
and your children's tears caught fast in an instant
and held like buds on a young tree
planted in the heart. She may have seen you
all at once, in a colorful dream
when she left.
When my mother died 13 people came to the service
not speaking to each other; a real or imagined
past, slights of rejection and anger,
the noble ignominies of a lost faith. I learned
to love from friends, lovers, the distant stare
my generations taught me gave way in inches
coming back like a poor relation taking
the best and worst from me. Loss becomes something
like a collection of insects, flying around
as we take and lose what is valued
only when something is given and found;
we miss those most who touch and hold
the fragile dragonflies of the heart.
And here we are the products of our selves;
what we are given is what we will become,
what we will become is what we have given
and kept, our identities only the ill-fitting masks
made by a tailor who lost his shop years ago.
In you it's the eyes of your children, your friends,
the momentary touches of color our dreams should have.
Keep them always; they will show you an infinity
that will come as a kiss when it finally happens.
Saturday, January 15, 2011
THE BLUE NETWORK edit one Part 2 FEAR OF BUTTERFLIES
THE BLUE NETWORK
The Senator was drunk. Stifling air would hold fast
in the too small too large room. A nation in fear
he would hold it’s reins with authority but shaking;
the incompleteness of his completeness becoming
a weakened arrogance of a sterner power flying far away.
The eye of the world near him was a heavy box, grey,
slight steam rising above too bright lights and one man,
pushing the buttons and pointing now here now there
now into the realities of those who would watch
as natures predators flew outside, oblivious.
Sandra brought the man coffee, watched the sweat
of the Senator glisten, a light that truth can only hold
mocking his drunkenness like a shadow running fast
and away. She thought of her aunt from Germany coughing,
her little niece Micky, the world that the little one
might find herself fighting and winning as a daily balance.
The Senator muttered, slurred his importance,
dreamed of drink and a home in history’s humble hall
where he’d never mesh with the furniture.
It was a question of decency here, a failure of culture,
a wanting too greatly to grasp a moment
that could never belong to anyone.
Sandra marveled at the Technicolor. The young man
would not, cold war lust raging through this newly minted
adult, bursting as a too full balloon, he would wander
through the miles between his knee and Sandra’s.
The film was a road show picture, the wide screen
painted with colors artificial and beaming bright and Sandra,
awestruck, became part of every camera move, every nuance;
the dreams of the director becoming her own.
Splashed in the dark water of Burma, the prisoners
building the bridge for an enemy of one. Tapping her foot
she would mark the rhythm of every edit, each actor’s cue:
how one day she would do this, build a story from acetate parts,
hurried scripts and multiple moments repeated.
She could see the lights go up, dim and fade;
gels in place and the sound to speed she’d make
performers act and move in perfected balance,
or near so; an art manufactured with money and fame,
films would be her wings now, an opened cocoon,
she would fly over the patrons and laugh. The young man
was bored. He wasn’t getting laid tonight.
It was hot in the little box. The nervous man
knew what was expected, every question scripted with
proper answers and nervous stutters. Sandra held the script,
directing matching girls in perfect outfits. The men upstairs,
puppet master like, electrified the wires that would open
grey box eyes to a world of voyeurs, dreaming
too hard here’s where they belonged. The picture the box brought
came into their homes on artificial light too real and new.
The nervous man’s brilliance became their own;
lessons in school remembered not as a context
but as a siren song they could embrace without guilt.
No one knew what he knew. No one knew
what he didn’t know; his show of stammering intelligence
only a classical farce whose actors remember lines,
never proofed, never listened to. This song of ignorance,
a cacophony of ego without self, world without Earth,
brought to you by cosmetic dust and cigarette ash.
The “Applause” button is pushed with a sexual lust;
the response hoped for but never completely met.
Sandra motioned to the host, wrote his thoughts
on large cards cuing his offhand prepared comments.
It didn’t matter it was a lie; it was a lie
that could be believed, could be packaged and sold
like cigarettes, tonics, cosmetics, death.
Chicago air blew cold across the sanitarium. The cemetery adjacent
seemed to wait with the patience of many small trees whose leaves
fell too quickly with deafening passivity. Sandra held Micky’s hand
loosely, not wanting to hold her fast but like a kite
whose air fueled dips and turns cannot be altered below.
Consumption consumed Micky’s mother all too quickly now,
in gasping broken English and mended German she told her
teen aged child the available world is never
a complete picture. Snapshots of rivers and gaunt elms,
each broken, mended, broken further but somehow remembered
would fade away into dabs of grey where humans
once stood. Micky bristled at the alcove’s mounted butterflies;
a childhood trauma forgotten but ever present--bright wings
brought dark tears to her, each momentary life
splayed open and pinned to a board like
a promised kiss delivered by the wrong person. Micky
would be in Sandra’s care now, bringing with
old toys and new clothes, Micky would take her life
into another’s; her mother now bound to wheels and gasps.
The nurse took hold of the mother’s chair, drew her
to the sun room as its light disappears into darkness.
Snow began to build around the greystone block.
Foster Avenue trolley wires would click, spark, power
the gawkers in green behemoths passing the cameras and men
scared of questions and fumbling for their answers.
Sandra held the microphone aloft like a fisherman, waiting
to catch the nuanced truth in the official lie; the unexpected
expectations of honesty becoming a dance of fish
Sandra would try and fail to catch. Wind heavy and wet,
the young girl Lorriane would bring her coffee, agree
with Sandra the director took the shot too tight, too little
humanity in the picture. He ignored her; he
didn’t care for the voice of a tech in whispers doubting his
view of the real unreal scene. Police were stealing here;
homes, warehouses emptied of their fullness by those
who took trust as a liability, a bad penny to be passed
through the machine of human innocence, vending
the sadness of those to whom trust wasn’t
just a word to mix with others to fill the spaces.
The director became angry, Sandra became
a target for rage and his own ennui. He sent her
away. Two days later he was gone, the oven door
open like the paw of an aging tiger.
State & Rush meet at a point, a park of sorts, littered
with lost men who wonder where they’ve been, where life
would land one day & if they would be there to
greet it. Sandra and Lorriane crossed the park with worry,
quickly as if pursued mice with an unseen cat in tow.
The club’s lights streamed just ahead, the comic nervous
waiting for induction or heroin, either way
a plug to fill the emptiness he thought controlled him.
Their dates tagged behind, drunk, stuttering,
stumbling through their lives like beached fish flopping,
graping for something they would never feel.
They opened the club’s door as the four turned to one.
The comic smoked heavily, filling his lungs with gasps
of heat with a slight dash of light. He said the word:
cocksucker; all eyes opened wide, a hidden desire
became manifest in nervous twitters, their wishes secret
as they danced across the listeners minds. He said it again:
cocksucker. He was stopped this time, the law
would not allow this expression of secret guilt
and desire. No one laughed then.
The Senator was drunk. Stifling air would hold fast
in the too small too large room. A nation in fear
he would hold it’s reins with authority but shaking;
the incompleteness of his completeness becoming
a weakened arrogance of a sterner power flying far away.
The eye of the world near him was a heavy box, grey,
slight steam rising above too bright lights and one man,
pushing the buttons and pointing now here now there
now into the realities of those who would watch
as natures predators flew outside, oblivious.
Sandra brought the man coffee, watched the sweat
of the Senator glisten, a light that truth can only hold
mocking his drunkenness like a shadow running fast
and away. She thought of her aunt from Germany coughing,
her little niece Micky, the world that the little one
might find herself fighting and winning as a daily balance.
The Senator muttered, slurred his importance,
dreamed of drink and a home in history’s humble hall
where he’d never mesh with the furniture.
It was a question of decency here, a failure of culture,
a wanting too greatly to grasp a moment
that could never belong to anyone.
Sandra marveled at the Technicolor. The young man
would not, cold war lust raging through this newly minted
adult, bursting as a too full balloon, he would wander
through the miles between his knee and Sandra’s.
The film was a road show picture, the wide screen
painted with colors artificial and beaming bright and Sandra,
awestruck, became part of every camera move, every nuance;
the dreams of the director becoming her own.
Splashed in the dark water of Burma, the prisoners
building the bridge for an enemy of one. Tapping her foot
she would mark the rhythm of every edit, each actor’s cue:
how one day she would do this, build a story from acetate parts,
hurried scripts and multiple moments repeated.
She could see the lights go up, dim and fade;
gels in place and the sound to speed she’d make
performers act and move in perfected balance,
or near so; an art manufactured with money and fame,
films would be her wings now, an opened cocoon,
she would fly over the patrons and laugh. The young man
was bored. He wasn’t getting laid tonight.
It was hot in the little box. The nervous man
knew what was expected, every question scripted with
proper answers and nervous stutters. Sandra held the script,
directing matching girls in perfect outfits. The men upstairs,
puppet master like, electrified the wires that would open
grey box eyes to a world of voyeurs, dreaming
too hard here’s where they belonged. The picture the box brought
came into their homes on artificial light too real and new.
The nervous man’s brilliance became their own;
lessons in school remembered not as a context
but as a siren song they could embrace without guilt.
No one knew what he knew. No one knew
what he didn’t know; his show of stammering intelligence
only a classical farce whose actors remember lines,
never proofed, never listened to. This song of ignorance,
a cacophony of ego without self, world without Earth,
brought to you by cosmetic dust and cigarette ash.
The “Applause” button is pushed with a sexual lust;
the response hoped for but never completely met.
Sandra motioned to the host, wrote his thoughts
on large cards cuing his offhand prepared comments.
It didn’t matter it was a lie; it was a lie
that could be believed, could be packaged and sold
like cigarettes, tonics, cosmetics, death.
Chicago air blew cold across the sanitarium. The cemetery adjacent
seemed to wait with the patience of many small trees whose leaves
fell too quickly with deafening passivity. Sandra held Micky’s hand
loosely, not wanting to hold her fast but like a kite
whose air fueled dips and turns cannot be altered below.
Consumption consumed Micky’s mother all too quickly now,
in gasping broken English and mended German she told her
teen aged child the available world is never
a complete picture. Snapshots of rivers and gaunt elms,
each broken, mended, broken further but somehow remembered
would fade away into dabs of grey where humans
once stood. Micky bristled at the alcove’s mounted butterflies;
a childhood trauma forgotten but ever present--bright wings
brought dark tears to her, each momentary life
splayed open and pinned to a board like
a promised kiss delivered by the wrong person. Micky
would be in Sandra’s care now, bringing with
old toys and new clothes, Micky would take her life
into another’s; her mother now bound to wheels and gasps.
The nurse took hold of the mother’s chair, drew her
to the sun room as its light disappears into darkness.
Snow began to build around the greystone block.
Foster Avenue trolley wires would click, spark, power
the gawkers in green behemoths passing the cameras and men
scared of questions and fumbling for their answers.
Sandra held the microphone aloft like a fisherman, waiting
to catch the nuanced truth in the official lie; the unexpected
expectations of honesty becoming a dance of fish
Sandra would try and fail to catch. Wind heavy and wet,
the young girl Lorriane would bring her coffee, agree
with Sandra the director took the shot too tight, too little
humanity in the picture. He ignored her; he
didn’t care for the voice of a tech in whispers doubting his
view of the real unreal scene. Police were stealing here;
homes, warehouses emptied of their fullness by those
who took trust as a liability, a bad penny to be passed
through the machine of human innocence, vending
the sadness of those to whom trust wasn’t
just a word to mix with others to fill the spaces.
The director became angry, Sandra became
a target for rage and his own ennui. He sent her
away. Two days later he was gone, the oven door
open like the paw of an aging tiger.
State & Rush meet at a point, a park of sorts, littered
with lost men who wonder where they’ve been, where life
would land one day & if they would be there to
greet it. Sandra and Lorriane crossed the park with worry,
quickly as if pursued mice with an unseen cat in tow.
The club’s lights streamed just ahead, the comic nervous
waiting for induction or heroin, either way
a plug to fill the emptiness he thought controlled him.
Their dates tagged behind, drunk, stuttering,
stumbling through their lives like beached fish flopping,
graping for something they would never feel.
They opened the club’s door as the four turned to one.
The comic smoked heavily, filling his lungs with gasps
of heat with a slight dash of light. He said the word:
cocksucker; all eyes opened wide, a hidden desire
became manifest in nervous twitters, their wishes secret
as they danced across the listeners minds. He said it again:
cocksucker. He was stopped this time, the law
would not allow this expression of secret guilt
and desire. No one laughed then.
Friday, December 31, 2010
WELCOME TO THE UNAMERICAN DREAM my year without an automobile
On November 29, 2010, for her 61st birthday, I gave my personal assistant Mary my car. Because of downturns in the economy, and in particular the real estate trade, I had not been able to pay her for five months, so the car, a twelve year old BMW 3 series, was a fair (in my mind) trade-off. Although I write poetry, there is no money in that. I am reminded of Robert Graves' statement "There is no money in poetry, but then again there is no poetry in money either." I do not have the patience for college instructing either; the politics are ultra-rough, because the stakes involved in La Academe are so outlandishly small academics do have to do something to amuse themselves. So peddle bricks and dirt I do.
On December 5, 2010 on my 53rd birthday my Illinois state driver's licence expired. I switched over to an ID card, and let the driving ticket go the way of all things. In the same Thompson Center in Chicago, I managed to snag a "Chicago" CTA pass and rode the 146 bus to my home on Marine Drive.
The 146 CTA bus is an express bus that serves Chicago's North Side. It was one I used for many years when I worked in the Gold Coast area. One of the leading lights to ride the 146 was the late author Studs Terkel, who lived a few blocks from me. If I managed to catch the bus right at 10:17 in front of my building, there was Studs, holding court with the regular bus patrons en route to the WFMT studios where he worked. Studs and I became, well, not quite friends, but very friendly. Once, he had me on his radio program to read poetry & talk about the collision between the arts & business. Since I have made the call to walk away from the car world, I have taken the 146 downtown a few times. I half expect to see old Studs, red plaid shirt under brown coat there, telling stories of Bughouse Square, old time radio, and the like. Maybe now it's my turn.
During the course of 2011, I am not going to drive a car. From time to time I will share with you my tales of "Car Less in Chi-Town." What the hell, right.
On December 5, 2010 on my 53rd birthday my Illinois state driver's licence expired. I switched over to an ID card, and let the driving ticket go the way of all things. In the same Thompson Center in Chicago, I managed to snag a "Chicago" CTA pass and rode the 146 bus to my home on Marine Drive.
The 146 CTA bus is an express bus that serves Chicago's North Side. It was one I used for many years when I worked in the Gold Coast area. One of the leading lights to ride the 146 was the late author Studs Terkel, who lived a few blocks from me. If I managed to catch the bus right at 10:17 in front of my building, there was Studs, holding court with the regular bus patrons en route to the WFMT studios where he worked. Studs and I became, well, not quite friends, but very friendly. Once, he had me on his radio program to read poetry & talk about the collision between the arts & business. Since I have made the call to walk away from the car world, I have taken the 146 downtown a few times. I half expect to see old Studs, red plaid shirt under brown coat there, telling stories of Bughouse Square, old time radio, and the like. Maybe now it's my turn.
During the course of 2011, I am not going to drive a car. From time to time I will share with you my tales of "Car Less in Chi-Town." What the hell, right.
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
THIS IS BERLIN part 1 FEAR OF BUTTERFLIES
It started with stones, our aggressions
and a picture of others taking the world from us
to show us our selves. The children of the sky
versus the animals of their minds, the
lost pictures of better weather and times, those
who want and those who have wanted,
everything in cadence, all movement controlled
made manifest like a game of tag, you're it,
you're the one we hate because it's the game
that's offered. These are the enemies, the
unlimited and unknown targets keeping us
whole. What we would need is what we remember,
wrongly; the daemons of our myths only
better futures we could never live.
Weapons become the passion, the living,
the culture of time and our need to call the mountain
ours, they would tell us all human relations
have a basis in fear. They'd say
we look to others as a mirror, a broken glass
sharding into the souls of those we
would not know,
an accident in the roadway; the rumors
we call our history only
the deep kiss from the skull of a suicide.
"I''ve seen the face of God
and it ain't so bad" he said.
To the rear were Hannibal's Mountains;
up the road Patton's tanks held sway
against Caeser's bastard children and the
innumerable Ubermenschen who were
and weren't. He is the cook, remembering
nights on the bus from Kansas City
with Satchel Paige going ninety (I ain’t scary...)
ahead to a town whose welcome was
like a man in new store clothing running
away from tar and feather and the uncounted
desire that kept him going. They are colored
in a shade the good folk hate, in these folks eyes
they are reefer mad sexually driven
and playing in a pasture taken away in an instant
but not from them.
She thought of that first night at Buchenwald,
the Kino made by the woman from the mountain,
her postman lover and the stare from the rostrum
of the ranting mustached child told her
we could never know what we had again. She knew
because the smell her childhood sent
of the library fire when she was twelve
Schiller, Hesse, Rilke gone like a good dream
or a bad lover there for a second
and away for all time or place. This was the place,
and time would create itself, starvation
and the loss of a culture's identity or need
to have one, becomes a kindling
to set the flames covering the patrons in
blankets of ignorance no amount of chorine
would remove. Her lover stood behind each skeptic
saying "Er ist richtich. Kennst du?" although he didn't
but knew it. Work would be freedom, would be
their definition of the flight of identity
that would signify their souls.
The racial basis of nations tell us
fairy tales without moral; not just a lie
but a damned lie kills us
daily, keeps us quiet, gives us a God and say
Beware! you are the animal in which
your call of generations is not a pass
to this supper club. Humanity, only in general
terms is better kept not kept. We were not shown this,
not this filmstrip where the enemy
was not the Hun or the East but rather
the distance from Johnny's to Mary's desk.
Or, rather the distances between
our better selves and the world we are offered
in trade for our passions and discretions.
Call me a name, give me a lie I can
believe in and I'll fight the bastards too,
we'd think, or want to think, or want
othree to think about us.
Dear Mom:
They told us the war might be over soon. They said that we may go home before April but the Army isn't that sure. They might want our division to stay on to feed the prisoners and government people in the occupation. It's kinda funny that the captain told us this. The army only wants us in Germany when we can feed them. We were playing ball this morning, the officers against the mess hall staff. We beat the officers and then they made us stand at attention for the rest of the afternoon and then cancelled our passes for the weekend, saying that they didn't want us to mix with the German people. I know they mean the women, remember what happened to Uncle Henry in Mobile. I don't care about that but these people seem so lonely. They've lost their sons and husbands to us and we can't even talk to them. I can't believe the country that gave us Rilke could end up like this. I miss you. Send my love to Sharon and little Ty Jr.
Love you.
Tyrone
She remembered what the Oberst said,
Goering snored and Himmler was violent and never
ever talk to Goebels. She remembered the oath
sworn before school every morning to keep Germany
in her heart and actions, to please and comfort
the young and old men defending our lives
and the perfect world we would create. The Jew,
a parasite, the Negro an animal, art and music
for the Vaterland and keep yourself clean
and away from the enlisted men. She remembered
the youngest one saying, "Fur alle Mann ich muss
leben, ich hab' Der Fueher geleben" and believed it;
always sex in the name of the better world, the
Third Reign of the Teutons of the night and day.
But she knew the day was ending; the lovers
she had had died by theirs or others hands. She saw
not a future of perfection and said "Warum? Ich hab'
der Weltshlafraum von mein Hartz gebornen." and knew
the world would belong somewhere
but not here.
Near the end of all action comes a passing.
We are found in the land: this is ours
or theirs by means of occupation, the
underscoring of purpose and the meaning
of the possession of possessions at its time
when it could be courted, could never
show you the meaning of death even as it becomes
your middle name. All things in reflection,
all things of a fractional mastery; the cat
does not scare the mouse as does the mouse
does itself, names for its major arcana
not for points in the sky but for points of light beyond
his little comprehension; food, water, mating
the big animals who make strange noises
and kill each other. He would grasp his nose
and run toward the field, toward home, toward
his selection of private peace, his
own maze not placed there by the big ones
but by the subtle charm that nature gives
and gives away. Before we take it.
He read the telegram to the mess hall staff:
AT 09:00 04/23/45 SPECIAL SERVICES MEMBERS OF THE 145TH
QUARTERMASTER CORPS. WILL DEPLOY TO RELOCATION CENTER
2207 IN THE AMERICAN SECTOR OF BERLIN. SAID FORCES WILL
FEED AND HOUSE MEMBERS OF GERMAN GOVERNMENT AS
WELL AS 2ND JOY DIVISION SECTION OF WAFFEN SS. PLEASE
BE ADVISED THAT SAID SECTION WERE COURTESANS OF THE
GERMAN HIGH COMMAND AND ANY FRATERNIZATION WITH SAID
SECTION WILL BE REGARDED AS A BREECH OF CONDUCT UNDER AMERICAN FORCES CODE. THESE WOMEN WILL BE MEDICALLY
SCREENED FOR VENEREAL DISEASE AND RELEASED ON AN AS NEEDED BASIS. He knew what that meant. He remembered
Uncle Henry and his guitar, songs from Chicago
and the nights he spoke of the bootleggers,
numbers, policy, the various lights the South Side
folk had to illuminate their world. The farm girl,
blond and nineteen heard and giggled, thought
Henry held the city lights like a balloonman
waiting for school to let out and the summer
explodes into colors above him. She was smiling
when he said yes to her night and touch.
When he said no to the men surrounding his house.
When he said good-bye from the oak in front of the well.
She thought the encampment was clean, not
like the films shown her of her countrymen's past;
not the future promised but an obliteration,
squashed rats and hopes. As a little girl she thought
of fairy tales, dolls, the porcelain figures
given to fantasy without pain; the little bear of Berlin
bringing presents at Weinachten and snow.
Little angels would follow her, tell her new names,
made her friends for her like a candy bar
or her first kiss in the forest. The Americans said
she was clean, but, not knowing the words,
"filthy whore" meant nothing but a mumbled blurt.
In school she was taught America was filled
with lazy people without culture or taste; the
infinite cockroaches running throughout time,
but she also saw the young colored man
reading Rilke in English and sighing to himself.
Love is not a statement of fact, not
a condition of being in place when we should, not
the promise of anything simple when asked, but
not a question at all but where we belong. Love
should ask for nothing in trade, no touch when
no touch must be had, the deepest touch
when we are one in ourselves and each other.
Love is not a game because competition has losers.
Love only knows loss when its gone forever, but
love never really goes, only stands on its head
itself and laughs, for, if love is perfect it knows humor.
Love is the look in the eyes of an animal,
our animal selves reborn in an instant
or for years a fear runs away into everyone's night.
Love gives nothing to those who ask everything,
does not woo for pleasure or the gain of company
that should not be there. Loves askes nothing.
Tells nothing. Receives nothing. Touches nothing.
But does everything even in a second, or hour,
or day, week, year, lifetime.
"Entschuldigen Sie, Bitte. Lesen Sie der Dichter Rilke?"
"Ma'am, I don't speak German. Sorry." He backs away.
"Nein. Nein. Das Buch im seinen Hand. Die
Duineser Elegien von Rilke, ja?"
"This? Yes this is a German poet. But it's in English.
Do you speak English?"
"Ich verstehe Sie nicht. Aber Lesen zu mir das Dichten.
Bitte?"
He couldn't understand her but knew what she wanted.
He read to her of the terrifying angels, Neptune's
trident, not to woo Spring for it does not understand.
He knew she felt the words like the wings of a hummingbird
not seen but always there in motion. Violet streams
engulfed them, became them. She remembered
her first lover, reading Die Sonette an Orpheus
on the Danube, cold Autumn morning the night
filled with full and empty colors.
She would rise to close the window.
He would fall back to himself, saying no.
She would rise above his cot and point down.
He would fall, he'd thought, if he came towards her.
She would rise to meet him, knowing if
he would fall she could catch his touch.
He would rise to meet her, seeing her soft eyes.
She would fall in billowing hair and perfection.
He would rise and drop into her, scared that
she would fall on the floor and disappear.
He would rise to her deeper sight and passions,
she would fall in love for a moment and then
she would turn and rise turn and rise to meet him
he would turn and fall to her depths and caresses
she would turn and rise to explode his terrors
he would turn and fall and explode into hers.
He would turn to feel his heart as it would rise,
she would turn let her tears fall into his eyes.
Little boat we thank you for your departures.
We know where we are going. We move not unlike
a rabbit, scared and horny, wanting to create
ourselves, name the children for the Marx Brothers
or the saints or the Yankees in batting order.
They would play on the fields in time.
They would become themselves without us.
They would become themselves, and then,
turn to another and start this drama again. We can
make ourselves beyond the world, a culture
of passion's children dancing outside
or inside the better parts of our best soil.
We can plant the seed and let it grow to flower
before the lightening.
Dear Mom,
I'm writing you from a transport across the Atlantic. It was all that quickly that they sent us home. Got to play ball in England and taught the Tommies how to hit the curve ball.. I won't be long, but then this letter might get there and I'll be home to read it. Sacthel wants me back in KC as soon as I can but I don't want to go just yet. Don't tell Sharon but I met a German girl but didn't know her long. Sing "Starlight Starbright " to little Ty and kiss him for me too.
Love you.
Tyrone
It was in the spring when her baby was born.
She named her Mikalela after her mad uncle
who disappeared one night with an Arab woman
and was found smoking hashish in a tavern in Cairo.
He was never lost; he didn't want to be found.
Dark skies above him he would run from the thunder
and dive between the hedges to quiet the skies.
Standing at the rear of a cargo ship she would
look back at her lost world, an Europe held together
only by its own histories, the myths lost,
and the key found under the mat. She would sing
Hab' keine angst meine shoene Kindere
Meine Klinere Schmetterlinge
Meine Klinere Leben
to the little one at her bosom, knowing America might
not be home, but this little one might never see the fall
of humankind there. Or, if the little one saw it,
her curly brown tresses would keep it away somehow
like her blue eyes that illuminate the sky.
and a picture of others taking the world from us
to show us our selves. The children of the sky
versus the animals of their minds, the
lost pictures of better weather and times, those
who want and those who have wanted,
everything in cadence, all movement controlled
made manifest like a game of tag, you're it,
you're the one we hate because it's the game
that's offered. These are the enemies, the
unlimited and unknown targets keeping us
whole. What we would need is what we remember,
wrongly; the daemons of our myths only
better futures we could never live.
Weapons become the passion, the living,
the culture of time and our need to call the mountain
ours, they would tell us all human relations
have a basis in fear. They'd say
we look to others as a mirror, a broken glass
sharding into the souls of those we
would not know,
an accident in the roadway; the rumors
we call our history only
the deep kiss from the skull of a suicide.
"I''ve seen the face of God
and it ain't so bad" he said.
To the rear were Hannibal's Mountains;
up the road Patton's tanks held sway
against Caeser's bastard children and the
innumerable Ubermenschen who were
and weren't. He is the cook, remembering
nights on the bus from Kansas City
with Satchel Paige going ninety (I ain’t scary...)
ahead to a town whose welcome was
like a man in new store clothing running
away from tar and feather and the uncounted
desire that kept him going. They are colored
in a shade the good folk hate, in these folks eyes
they are reefer mad sexually driven
and playing in a pasture taken away in an instant
but not from them.
She thought of that first night at Buchenwald,
the Kino made by the woman from the mountain,
her postman lover and the stare from the rostrum
of the ranting mustached child told her
we could never know what we had again. She knew
because the smell her childhood sent
of the library fire when she was twelve
Schiller, Hesse, Rilke gone like a good dream
or a bad lover there for a second
and away for all time or place. This was the place,
and time would create itself, starvation
and the loss of a culture's identity or need
to have one, becomes a kindling
to set the flames covering the patrons in
blankets of ignorance no amount of chorine
would remove. Her lover stood behind each skeptic
saying "Er ist richtich. Kennst du?" although he didn't
but knew it. Work would be freedom, would be
their definition of the flight of identity
that would signify their souls.
The racial basis of nations tell us
fairy tales without moral; not just a lie
but a damned lie kills us
daily, keeps us quiet, gives us a God and say
Beware! you are the animal in which
your call of generations is not a pass
to this supper club. Humanity, only in general
terms is better kept not kept. We were not shown this,
not this filmstrip where the enemy
was not the Hun or the East but rather
the distance from Johnny's to Mary's desk.
Or, rather the distances between
our better selves and the world we are offered
in trade for our passions and discretions.
Call me a name, give me a lie I can
believe in and I'll fight the bastards too,
we'd think, or want to think, or want
othree to think about us.
Dear Mom:
They told us the war might be over soon. They said that we may go home before April but the Army isn't that sure. They might want our division to stay on to feed the prisoners and government people in the occupation. It's kinda funny that the captain told us this. The army only wants us in Germany when we can feed them. We were playing ball this morning, the officers against the mess hall staff. We beat the officers and then they made us stand at attention for the rest of the afternoon and then cancelled our passes for the weekend, saying that they didn't want us to mix with the German people. I know they mean the women, remember what happened to Uncle Henry in Mobile. I don't care about that but these people seem so lonely. They've lost their sons and husbands to us and we can't even talk to them. I can't believe the country that gave us Rilke could end up like this. I miss you. Send my love to Sharon and little Ty Jr.
Love you.
Tyrone
She remembered what the Oberst said,
Goering snored and Himmler was violent and never
ever talk to Goebels. She remembered the oath
sworn before school every morning to keep Germany
in her heart and actions, to please and comfort
the young and old men defending our lives
and the perfect world we would create. The Jew,
a parasite, the Negro an animal, art and music
for the Vaterland and keep yourself clean
and away from the enlisted men. She remembered
the youngest one saying, "Fur alle Mann ich muss
leben, ich hab' Der Fueher geleben" and believed it;
always sex in the name of the better world, the
Third Reign of the Teutons of the night and day.
But she knew the day was ending; the lovers
she had had died by theirs or others hands. She saw
not a future of perfection and said "Warum? Ich hab'
der Weltshlafraum von mein Hartz gebornen." and knew
the world would belong somewhere
but not here.
Near the end of all action comes a passing.
We are found in the land: this is ours
or theirs by means of occupation, the
underscoring of purpose and the meaning
of the possession of possessions at its time
when it could be courted, could never
show you the meaning of death even as it becomes
your middle name. All things in reflection,
all things of a fractional mastery; the cat
does not scare the mouse as does the mouse
does itself, names for its major arcana
not for points in the sky but for points of light beyond
his little comprehension; food, water, mating
the big animals who make strange noises
and kill each other. He would grasp his nose
and run toward the field, toward home, toward
his selection of private peace, his
own maze not placed there by the big ones
but by the subtle charm that nature gives
and gives away. Before we take it.
He read the telegram to the mess hall staff:
AT 09:00 04/23/45 SPECIAL SERVICES MEMBERS OF THE 145TH
QUARTERMASTER CORPS. WILL DEPLOY TO RELOCATION CENTER
2207 IN THE AMERICAN SECTOR OF BERLIN. SAID FORCES WILL
FEED AND HOUSE MEMBERS OF GERMAN GOVERNMENT AS
WELL AS 2ND JOY DIVISION SECTION OF WAFFEN SS. PLEASE
BE ADVISED THAT SAID SECTION WERE COURTESANS OF THE
GERMAN HIGH COMMAND AND ANY FRATERNIZATION WITH SAID
SECTION WILL BE REGARDED AS A BREECH OF CONDUCT UNDER AMERICAN FORCES CODE. THESE WOMEN WILL BE MEDICALLY
SCREENED FOR VENEREAL DISEASE AND RELEASED ON AN AS NEEDED BASIS. He knew what that meant. He remembered
Uncle Henry and his guitar, songs from Chicago
and the nights he spoke of the bootleggers,
numbers, policy, the various lights the South Side
folk had to illuminate their world. The farm girl,
blond and nineteen heard and giggled, thought
Henry held the city lights like a balloonman
waiting for school to let out and the summer
explodes into colors above him. She was smiling
when he said yes to her night and touch.
When he said no to the men surrounding his house.
When he said good-bye from the oak in front of the well.
She thought the encampment was clean, not
like the films shown her of her countrymen's past;
not the future promised but an obliteration,
squashed rats and hopes. As a little girl she thought
of fairy tales, dolls, the porcelain figures
given to fantasy without pain; the little bear of Berlin
bringing presents at Weinachten and snow.
Little angels would follow her, tell her new names,
made her friends for her like a candy bar
or her first kiss in the forest. The Americans said
she was clean, but, not knowing the words,
"filthy whore" meant nothing but a mumbled blurt.
In school she was taught America was filled
with lazy people without culture or taste; the
infinite cockroaches running throughout time,
but she also saw the young colored man
reading Rilke in English and sighing to himself.
Love is not a statement of fact, not
a condition of being in place when we should, not
the promise of anything simple when asked, but
not a question at all but where we belong. Love
should ask for nothing in trade, no touch when
no touch must be had, the deepest touch
when we are one in ourselves and each other.
Love is not a game because competition has losers.
Love only knows loss when its gone forever, but
love never really goes, only stands on its head
itself and laughs, for, if love is perfect it knows humor.
Love is the look in the eyes of an animal,
our animal selves reborn in an instant
or for years a fear runs away into everyone's night.
Love gives nothing to those who ask everything,
does not woo for pleasure or the gain of company
that should not be there. Loves askes nothing.
Tells nothing. Receives nothing. Touches nothing.
But does everything even in a second, or hour,
or day, week, year, lifetime.
"Entschuldigen Sie, Bitte. Lesen Sie der Dichter Rilke?"
"Ma'am, I don't speak German. Sorry." He backs away.
"Nein. Nein. Das Buch im seinen Hand. Die
Duineser Elegien von Rilke, ja?"
"This? Yes this is a German poet. But it's in English.
Do you speak English?"
"Ich verstehe Sie nicht. Aber Lesen zu mir das Dichten.
Bitte?"
He couldn't understand her but knew what she wanted.
He read to her of the terrifying angels, Neptune's
trident, not to woo Spring for it does not understand.
He knew she felt the words like the wings of a hummingbird
not seen but always there in motion. Violet streams
engulfed them, became them. She remembered
her first lover, reading Die Sonette an Orpheus
on the Danube, cold Autumn morning the night
filled with full and empty colors.
She would rise to close the window.
He would fall back to himself, saying no.
She would rise above his cot and point down.
He would fall, he'd thought, if he came towards her.
She would rise to meet him, knowing if
he would fall she could catch his touch.
He would rise to meet her, seeing her soft eyes.
She would fall in billowing hair and perfection.
He would rise and drop into her, scared that
she would fall on the floor and disappear.
He would rise to her deeper sight and passions,
she would fall in love for a moment and then
she would turn and rise turn and rise to meet him
he would turn and fall to her depths and caresses
she would turn and rise to explode his terrors
he would turn and fall and explode into hers.
He would turn to feel his heart as it would rise,
she would turn let her tears fall into his eyes.
Little boat we thank you for your departures.
We know where we are going. We move not unlike
a rabbit, scared and horny, wanting to create
ourselves, name the children for the Marx Brothers
or the saints or the Yankees in batting order.
They would play on the fields in time.
They would become themselves without us.
They would become themselves, and then,
turn to another and start this drama again. We can
make ourselves beyond the world, a culture
of passion's children dancing outside
or inside the better parts of our best soil.
We can plant the seed and let it grow to flower
before the lightening.
Dear Mom,
I'm writing you from a transport across the Atlantic. It was all that quickly that they sent us home. Got to play ball in England and taught the Tommies how to hit the curve ball.. I won't be long, but then this letter might get there and I'll be home to read it. Sacthel wants me back in KC as soon as I can but I don't want to go just yet. Don't tell Sharon but I met a German girl but didn't know her long. Sing "Starlight Starbright " to little Ty and kiss him for me too.
Love you.
Tyrone
It was in the spring when her baby was born.
She named her Mikalela after her mad uncle
who disappeared one night with an Arab woman
and was found smoking hashish in a tavern in Cairo.
He was never lost; he didn't want to be found.
Dark skies above him he would run from the thunder
and dive between the hedges to quiet the skies.
Standing at the rear of a cargo ship she would
look back at her lost world, an Europe held together
only by its own histories, the myths lost,
and the key found under the mat. She would sing
Hab' keine angst meine shoene Kindere
Meine Klinere Schmetterlinge
Meine Klinere Leben
to the little one at her bosom, knowing America might
not be home, but this little one might never see the fall
of humankind there. Or, if the little one saw it,
her curly brown tresses would keep it away somehow
like her blue eyes that illuminate the sky.
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