Glad to be back in the desert
After all the wasted years;
The javelinas of the 1950s
Are gone now of course
But new ones have arrived
and they still need water only
A few times during the year;
The big saguaro cacti can be
Two hundred years old and
When a beautiful young king snake
Went looking for a place to hide
I knew exactly how it felt although
I'm not quite eighty yet. Look!
There's a female tarantula.
How ironic that, as intellectuals and aesthetes, those of us who live by words may underestimate the power of the words we speak or write. Just the other day I was in pleasant conversation with a talented versifier when he happened to mention the name "Lilith." Although he was referring to the radical feminist magazine that may or may not still exist, there is no doubt that the real Lilith still exists just as she has since the time of Adam. And to utter her name without quickly pretending to spit twice over one's right shoulder is asking for serious trouble.
Lilith (spit, spit!) as some of you may know, was Adam's first wife. When she affronted the Creator by insisting on "unorthodox" relations with her husband, she was banished from Eden and spent the next 500 years at the bottom of the ocean. Finally she surfaced, determined to wreak as much havoc as possible in human domestic affairs.
When Lilith hears a man mention her name, she surmises (quite correctly!) that a secret wish for her appearance exists in the speaker. Of course, as with any repressed wish, the poor fool may not be aware of his own desire. That's why Lilith always appears in disguise. The new temp at the office, the Fedex delivery girl, the grad student in need of help with her thesis -- any or all of these may be Lilith. But those potential incarnations are relatively easy to resist. Lilith is much more dangerous when she manifests as a man's own wife!
If a woman appears and sounds like his wife, a man -- and especially a poet, naive by nature -- may assume the woman is his wife indeed: "If it looks like a duck..." etc. He may also forget that he spoke the forbidden name that morning in Starbucks. Well, he's in for a surprise -- and the worst part is, Lilith is dangerously addictive. Not only is she erotically exciting but she's also an excellent conversationalist.
There are two solutions for this problem, both recommended by the ancient sages of the Talmud. First, don't speak the name in the first place! Just refer to the Bad Girl and any educated person will know who you're talking about. Second, create a secret code with your wife that only the two of you know -- an arbitrary phrase like "plate of shrimp" from the film Repo Man. If you sense anything unusual in your conjugal affairs, demand the password. If it's not forthcoming, fill a bucket with water and pour it on the demon woman. Lilith has hated water ever since her five hundred years in the ocean.
The images above are just two of Lilith's infintely various disguises. On top, of course, is Veronica from Archie Comics; below is a seemingly innocous dental hygenist. Poets! Choose Betty, not Veronica -- and floss daily!
from the archive; first posted December 5, 2014
Ode to the West Wind
My Picture Left in Scotland
I now think love is rather deaf, than blind,
For else it could not be,
That she,
Whom I adore so much, should so slight me,
And cast my love behind:
I'm sure my language was as sweet,
And every close did meet
In sentence of as subtle feet
As hath the youngest he,
That sits in shadow of Apollo's tree.
Oh, but my conscious fears,
That fly my thoughts between,
Tell me that she hath seen
My hundreds of gray hairs,
Told seven and forty years,
Read so much waist, as she cannot embrace
My mountain belly and my rock face,
As all these, through her eyes, have stopt her ears.
On my First Son
Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;
My sin was too much hope of thee, lov'd boy.
Seven years tho' wert lent to me, and I thee pay,
Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.
O, could I lose all father now! For why
Will man lament the state he should envy?
To have so soon 'scap'd world's and flesh's rage,
And if no other misery, yet age?
Rest in soft peace, and, ask'd, say, "Here doth lie
Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry."
For whose sake henceforth all his vows be such,
As what he loves may never like too much.
see also https://blog.bestamericanpoetry.com/the_best_american_poetry/2024/06/sonnet-73-great-poems-of-the-world-episode-2-with-david-lehman-and-mitch-sisskind-.html
https://blog.bestamericanpoetry.com/the_best_american_poetry/2024/07/my-life-had-stood-a-loaded-gun-great-poems-of-the-world-episode-5-with-david-lehman-and-mitch-sisski.html
https://blog.bestamericanpoetry.com/the_best_american_poetry/2024/11/ulysses-and-the-gettysburg-address-great-poems-of-the-world-with-david-lehman-and-mitch-sisskind.html
Here's Part One of "The Skaters," John Ashbery's
700 line poem that appeared in his book titled
Rivers and Mountains (1966.) The complete poem
is available at this link:
John Ashbery, "The Skaters"
The Skaters
I
These decibels
Are a kind of flagellation, an entity of sound
Into which being enters, and is apart.
Their colors on a warm February day
Make for masses of inertia, and hips
Prod out of the violet-seeming into a new kind
Of demand that stumps the absolute because not new
In the sense of the next one in an infinite series
But, as it were, pre-existing or pre-seeming in
Such a way as to contrast funnily with the unexpectedness
And somehow push us all into perdition.
Here a scarf flies, there an excited call is heard.
The answer is that it is novelty
That guides these swift blades o'er the ice,
Projects into a finer expression (but at the expense
Of energy) the profile I cannot remember.
Colors slip away from and chide us. The human mind
Cannot retain anything except perhaps the dismal two-note theme
Of some sodden "dump" or lament.
But the water surface ripples, the whole light changes.
We children are ashamed of our bodies
But we laugh and, demanded, talk of sex again
And all is well. The waves of morning harshness
Float away like coal-gas into the sky.
But how much survives? How much of any one of us survives?
The articles we'd collect-stamps of the colonies
With greasy cancellation marks, mauve, magenta and chocolate,
Or funny-looking dogs we'd see in the street, or bright remarks.
One collects bullets. An Indianapolis, Indiana man collects slingshots of all epochs, and so on.
Subtracted from our collections, though, these go on a little while, collecting aimlessly. We still support them.
But so little energy they have! And up the swollen sands
Staggers the darkness fiend, with the storm fiend close behind him!
True, melodious tolling does go on in that awful pandemonium,
Certain resonances are not utterly displeasing to the terrified eardrum.
Some paroxysms are dinning of tambourine, others suggest piano room or organ loft
For the most dissonant night charms us, even after death. This, after all, may be happiness: tuba notes awash on the great flood, ruptures of xylophone, violins, limpets, grace-notes, the musical instrument called serpent, viola da gambas, aeolian harps, clavicles, pinball machines, electric drills, que sais-je encore!
The performance has rapidly reached your ear; silent and tear-stained, in the post-mortem shock, you stand listening, awash
With memories of hair in particular, part of the welling that is you,
The gurgling of harp, cymbal, glockenspiel, triangle, temple block, English horn and metronome! And still no presentiment, no feeling of pain before or after.
The passage sustains, does not give. And you have come far indeed.
Yet to go from "not interesting" to "old and uninteresting,"
To be surrounded by friends, though late in life,
To hear the wings of the spirit, though far....
Why do I hurriedly undrown myself to cut you down?
"I am yesterday," and my fault is eternal.
I do not expect constant attendance, knowing myself insufficient for your present demands
And I have a dim intuition that I am that other "I" with which we began.
My cheeks as blank walls to your tears and eagerness
Fondling that other, as though you had let him get away forever.
The evidence of the visual henceforth replaced
By the great shadow of trees falling over life.
A child's devotion
To this normal, shapeless entity....
Forgotten as the words fly briskly across, each time
Bringing down meaning as snow from a low sky, or rabbits flushed from a wood.
How strange that the narrow perspective lines
Always seem to meet, although parallel, and that an insane ghost could do this,
Could make the house seem so much farther in the distance, as
It seemed to the horse, dragging the sledge of a perspective line.
Dim banners in the distance, to die.... And nothing put to rights. The pigs in their cages
And so much snow, but it is to be littered with waste and ashes
So that cathedrals may grow. Out of this spring builds a tolerable
Affair of brushwood, the sea is felt behind oak wands, noiselessly pouring.
Spring with its promise of winter, and the black ivy once again
On the porch, its yellow perspective bands in place
And the horse nears them and weeps.
So much has passed through my mind this morning
That I can give you but a dim account of it:
It is already after lunch, the men are returning to their positions around the cement mixer
And I try to sort out what has happened to me. The bundle of Gerard's letters,
And that awful bit of news buried on the back page of yesterday's paper.
Then the news of you this morning, in the snow. Sometimes the interval
Of bad news is so brisk that... And the human brain, with its tray of images
Seems a sorcerer's magic lantern, projecting black and orange cellophane shadows
On the distance of my hand... The very reaction's puny,
And when we seek to move around, wondering what our position is now, what the arm of that chair.
A great wind lifted these cardboard panels
Horizontal in the air. At once the perspective with the horse
Disappeared in a bigarrure of squiggly lines. The image with the crocodile in it became no longer apparent.
Thus a great wind cleanses, as a new ruler
Edits new laws, sweeping the very breath of the streets
Into posterior trash. The films have changed-
The great titles on the scalloped awning have turned dry and blight-colored.
No wind that does not penetrate a man's house, into the very bowels of the furnace,
Scratching in dust a name on the mirror-say, and what about letters,
The dried grasses, fruits of the winter-gosh! Everything is trash!
The wind points to the advantages of decay
At the same time as removing them far from the sight of men.
The regent of the winds, Aeolus, is a symbol for all earthly potentates
Since holding this sickening, festering process by which we are cleansed
Of afterthought.
A girl slowly descended the line of steps.
The wind and treason are partners, turning secrets over to the military police.
Lengthening arches. The intensity of minor acts. As skaters elaborate their distances,
Taking a separate line to its end. Returning to the mass, they join each other
Blotted in an incredible mess of dark colors, and again reappearing to take the theme
Some little distance, like fishing boats developing from the land different parabolas,
Taking the exquisite theme far, into farness, to Land's End, to the ends of the earth!
But the livery of the year, the changing air
Bring each to fulfillment. Leaving phrases unfinished,
Gestures half-sketched against woodsmoke. The abundant sap
Oozes in girls' throats, the sticky words, half-uttered, unwished for,
A blanket disbelief, quickly supplanted by idle questions that fade in turn.
Slowly the mood turns to look at itself as some urchin
Forgotten by the roadside. New schemes are got up, new taxes,
Earthworks. And the hours becomes light again.
Girls wake up in it.
It is best to remain indoors. Because there is error
In so much precision. As flames are fanned, wishful thinking arises
Bearing its own prophets, its pointed ignoring. And just as a desire
Settles down at the end of a long spring day, over heather and watered shoot and dried rush field,
So error is plaited into desires not yet born.
Therefore the post must be resumed (is being falsified
To be forever involved, tragically, with one's own image?).
The studio light suddenly invaded the long casement-values were what
She knows now. But the floor is being slowly pulled apart
Like straw under those limpid feet.
And Helga, in the minuscule apartment in Jersey City
Is reacting violet to the same land of dress, is drawing death
Again in blossoms against the reactionary fire... pulsing
And knowing nothing to superb lambent distances that intercalate
This city. Is the death of the cube repeated. Or in the musical album.
It is time now for a general understanding of
The meaning of all this. The meaning of Helga, importance of the setting, etc.
A description of the blues. Labels on bottles
And all kinds of discarded objects that ought to be described.
But can one ever be sure of which ones?
Isn't this a death-trap, wanting to put too much in
So the floor sags, as under the weight of a piano, or a piano-legged girl
And the whole house of cards comes dinning down around one's ears!
But this is an important aspect of the question
Which I am not ready to discuss, am not at all ready to,
This leaving-out business. On it hinges the very importance of what's novel
Or autocratic, or dense or silly. It is as well to call attention
To it by exaggeration, perhaps. But calling attention
Isn't the same thing as explaining, and as I said I am not ready
To line phrases with the costly stuff of explanation, and shall not,
Will not do so for the moment. Except to say that the carnivorous
Way of these lines is to devour their own nature, leaving
Nothing but a bitter impression of absence, which as we know involves presence, but still.
Nevertheless these are fundamental absences, struggling to get up and be off themselves.
This, thus, is a portion of the subject of this poem
Which is in the form of falling snow:
That is, the individual flakes are not essential to the importance of the whole's becoming so much of a truism
That their importance is again called in question, to be denied further out, and again and again like this.
Hence, neither the importance of the individual flake,
Nor the importance of the whole impression of the storm, if it has any, is what it is,
But the rhythm of the series of repeated jumps, from abstract into positive and back to a slightly less diluted abstract.
Mild effects are the result.
I cannot think any more of going out into all that, will stay here
With my quiet schmerzen. Besides the storm is almost over
Having frozen the face of the bust into a strange style with the lips
And the teeth the most distinct part of the whole business.
It is this madness to explain....
What is the matter with plain old-fashioned cause-and-effect?
Leaving one alone with romantic impressions of the trees, the sky?
Who, actually, is going to be fooled one instant by these phony explanations,
Think them important? So back we go to the old, imprecise feelings, the
Common knowledge, the importance of duly suffering and the occasional glimpses
Of some balmy felicity. The world of Schubert's lieder. I am fascinated
Though by the urge to get out of it all, by going
Further in and correcting the whole mismanaged mess. But am afraid I'll
Be of no help to you. Good-bye.
As balloons are to the poet, so to the ground
Its varied assortment of trees. The more assorted they are, the
Vaster his experience. Sometimes
You catch sight of them on a level with the top story of a house,
Strung up there for publicity purposes. Or like those bubbles
Children make with a kind of ring, not a pipe, and probably using some detergent
Rather than plain everyday soap and water. Where was I? The balloons
Drift thoughtfully over the land, not exactly commenting on it;
These are the range of the poet's experience. He can hide in trees
Like a hamadryad, but wisely prefers not to, letting the balloons
Idle him out of existence, as a car idles. Traveling faster
And more furiously across unknown horizons, belted into the night
Wishing more and more to be unlike someone, getting the whole thing
(So he believes) out of his system. Inventing systems.
We are a part of some system, thinks he, just as the sun is part of
The solar system. Trees brake his approach. And he seems to be wearing but
Half a coat, viewed from one side. A "half-man" look inspiring the disgust of honest folk
Returning from chores, the milk frozen, the pump heaped high with a chapeau of snow,
The "No Skating" sign as well. But it is here that he is best,
Face to face with the unsmiling alternatives of his nerve-wracking existence.
Placed squarely in front of his dilemma, on all fours before the lamentable spectacle of the unknown.
Yet knowing where men are coming from. It is this, to hold the candle up to the album.
Kubla Khan
Or, a vision in a dream. A Fragment.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea..
Okay, the people of Westhaven were angry that the presidential election
would get rigged against R.L. Greene.
R.L. Greene himself often said how an election is a right of free speech
and interfering with free speech is treason against the constitution.
As an example of free speech, R.L. Greene was the only candidate for
president who ever said the word fuck during a campaign. He liked to say,
“I let the fuck out of the bag.”
He also said you can’t put toothpaste back in a tube so the establishment
shouldn’t try to put the word fuck back.
Okay, Trig Coleman was called Bub. Bub knew he would be arrested if he
took up arms against the rigged election. Maybe his friends planned to take
up arms but Bub was trepidatious to join them. He was enraged about the
infringement on the constitution but he was also hopeless. The fix was in.
Nothing he could do would have any positive effect so he shot himself in
the head the night before the election. Heidi, Bub’s wife, also shot herself
in the head.
Okay, Bub was twenty-nine years old when he passed on and Heidi was
twenty-three. Their last moments occurred less than one year after their
wedding ceremony in the snow-covered yard of the Brethern church.
Bub and Heidi loved snowmobiles so they arrived at the church in a
snowmobile. They were smiling and waving. All the onlookers were
struck by the happiness of the couple.
The wedding was open-carry. Bub’s right hand rested on his holstered
.45 as he said his I do. Heidi was not packing although in her snowsuit
her sexual hotness was obvious and she was wearing a FUCK hat.
Months later at the joint funeral of Bub and Heidi the pastor of that same
Brethren church mentioned that maybe their happiness on their wedding
day had attracted the attention of the devil.
The devil is always attracted when things look to be going well in people’s
affairs.
The devil probably saw how Bub’s snowmobile repair business was starting
to take off.
And the devil most likely also noticed how Mr. Dykstra at the bank helped
Bub and Heidi get set up in their house on Baseline Road.
Okay, it was a two-story, four-room house on Baseline Road with a yard
and a garage in the back where Bub worked on snowmobiles. The
downstairs living room and the dining room didn’t get much sun so the
young couple was often in the sun-kissed bedroom upstairs. Next to
the bedroom Bub converted the other upstairs room into his man cave.
Bub and Heidi agreed to skip a honeymoon. There was nowhere in America
to go considering the shape America was in and they had no intention of
spending their money in a foreign country. Instead of the honeymoon Bub
got an antique S&W .38 Special revolver for Heidi which still worked.
Okay, after they fucked on their wedding night Bub presented Heidi with
the .38 after which she sat on the edge of the bed with the .38 in her lap
like a baby.
Bub went and got his .45 from the man cave. He then sat down on the floor
with the .45 and explained how it was a 1911 that had belonged to his Uncle
Reed who had shot himself in the head with it.
Bub continued, “My Uncle Reed was a veterinarian but right after he got his
license he was drafted for the Korean War. There was a litter of pups he was
raising and the day before he left for the war he shot the pups with this gun
right here. When he got back from Korea he shot himself with it like he did
with the pups.”
Bub was silent for a moment and then said, “Do you see what I’m getting at?”
Heidi came down off the bed and sat on the floor next to Bub. She said,
“Well, nobody was going to take care of those pups while your Uncle Reed
was gone. They would probably have starved to death. And when he got
back from the war who was going to take care of him if he was all messed
up in the head? It sounds like when things got bad enough he just decided
to end it all.”
After another silent moment Bub said, “Heidi, in the not too distant future I’m
probably going to shoot myself in the head. It’s because R.L. Greene will run
for president and they’re going to rig the election against him.”
Heidi said, “Yeah.”
She too was silent for a moment but eventually she said, “I’ll do it too.”
"You sure you want to?”
Heidi nodded yes and Bub returned to his man cave. He came back
with a box of .38 Special 158 grain Buffalo Bore ammo. He gave the
box of ammo to Heidi who placed it beside the gun which she had placed
on the floor when she got off the bed.
No words were spoken. A silent agreement came into existence between them.
Okay, they were horny again. There was a TV in the bedroom. They watched
porn on the TV with the sound off. They smoked weed. They drank wine.
Ultimately in the exploding union of their bodies the porn, the weed, the wine,
the .45, the .38, the ammo, the snowmobiles, R.L. Greene, and even the
rigged election kind of vaporized. Then they fell asleep with the porn still
playing on the TV with the sound off and with the guns and ammo on the floor.
Okay, as the months passed leading up to the election Bub’s inner circle of his
friends was starting to get paranoid and stuff. Bub and his friends decided to
spend the last weekend before the election at a motel in Ludington. This was
in order to get the lay of the land and decide what to do and what not to do.
On Friday afternoon Bub told Heidi that he would be going to Ludington
until Sunday night or maybe Monday.
Heidi did not ask for the details. Bub and his friends sometimes liked going off
on their own for a few days as was now the case during football season which
was also hunting season. Heidi did sense that something was amiss but she
kept her own counsel. Bub fucked her before he left and then Heidi was in
the house by herself.
Okay, before she got married Heidi worked in an old people’s home in Muskegon.
She ran the bingo games of which there was a game in the morning and another
one in the afternoon.
The old geezers were sort of addicted to bingo. Even though there were no prizes
for the bingo games there was excitement when the winners of a game stood up
and they got their round of applause.
A few of the geezers were more than one hundred years old. The staff knew
who they were however their ages were kept secret from the other old geezers.
At the beginning of each month there was always a group birthday party for
whoever was born in that month but without the ages being revealed.
Heidi’s mind drifted to the geezers as she found herself wandering back to the
garage where Bub worked on the snowmobiles late at night while Heidi sat there
and watched him as loud music played. Now in the garage Heidi noticed a sharp
contrast between the brightly colored snowmobiles and Heidi’s memories of the
geezers in Muskegon.
The snowmobiles represented the youth and sex that Heidi and Bub now had.
The geezers represented what was inevitably coming down the pike. It was
not only in terms of getting old but of everything in general, like how the election
was rigged against R.L. Greene.
Okay, the weekend passed swiftly. Lying in bed and watching TV on Saturday
morning and Sunday morning Heidi observed R.L. Greene holding his rallies
all over the country. With the election coming up on Tuesday there were two
or three rallies per day where R.L. Greene was so energetic as he sang
and danced. How did he do it all?
He was fat but he was still full of vim and vigor.
He referred to New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles as toilets.
Sometimes he twerked!
He said “hell,” “ass,” “crap,” “shit,” “bullshit,” and when he said “fuck,” or
“fucking,” or “how in the fuck” the crowd cheered him. It brought a smile
to Heidi’s face as she lay there in bed.
Okay, around four in the afternoon on Monday Heidi was puttering around and
she heard Bub’s truck pulling into the driveway. Then the front door opened
and Bub walked in.
He looked the worse for wear so after kissing him hello Heidi got a can of beer
from the refrigerator and gave it to Bub.
Bub sat down at the little table in the no-man’s-land between the kitchen and
the living room.
He took a swig of beer and said, “Hunkpapa is a rat.”
“What!”
“You heard me. He told the state police that we’ve got gun violence planned for
tomorrow. As soon as I heard that I got the hell out of there.”
Heidi hurriedly sat down across the little table from Bub. She took a drink from
his beer can and said, “How did you find out Hunkpapa is a rat?”
“He confessed it to us himself. His conscience got to him and he started blubbering.”
Furrowing her brow Heidi asked almost in a whisper, “Did you beat the shit out of him?”
“No. There wasn’t time for that. I got the hell out of there. Hunkpapa had went to the
state police barracks in Muskegon and had gave them everybody’s address and told
them we were planning on violence.”
After a moment of silence he added, “The cops are going to be here before long.
I promise you that.”
They stared at each other. They knew what they had to do. The time had come.
They went upstairs for one last fuck.
Okay, after fucking they were laying there on the bed for a period of time like two
lumps on a log. No words were spoken.
While they had been taking off their clothes they had each paused long enough to get
their guns and place them on the floor next to the bed where the guns now lay equally
quiescent as their owners.
During the coitus it occurred to Bub and it stuck in his craw that a man named
E. Talbot R. Gilmore would incredibly enough become the president of the
United States because the fix was in. Somehow that knowledge sexually
supercharged him along with the knowledge that they were going to blow their
heads off. He gave it everything he had in coitus and then he just lay there like
a whale washed up on the beach.
Heidi just lay there too except there was a paradoxical aspect to it. While they
were fucking she had felt like it was all too much, he was too big, too powerful.
It was how she usually felt. But now that it was over she paradoxically felt that
the coitus had been too powerful but it had also not been powerful enough.
This too was how she usually felt. It had seemed too big and powerful but also
at the same time it had not been big and powerful enough.
Okay, as the minutes passed Heidi’s body stayed perfectly still even though her
thoughts began racing. What if Bub had been a bear that tore her apart with its
teeth? Or what if she was the one who tore him apart with her teeth? What if they
ripped each other apart like maniacs and ate each other up? She wasn’t the least
bit repulsed by that, on the contrary in fact.
Eventually Heidi lolled her head over to look at Bub.
She said, “Hun…”
He said, “Yeah, I know.”
Okay, they put a few clothes on as if it would matter to them when their bodies were
found by the state police after they were dead. No words were spoken. Heidi put
on a simple house dress. She wore no bra. Bub put on a black t-shirt and his sweat
pants that he wore while working on snowmobiles. He also held a sweatshirt in
his hands.
They went and got their guns which Heidi got from her dresser drawer and Bub
got from his man cave.
They sat on the floor.
Bub said, “If you don’t mind I’ll go first.”
Holding his gun in one hand he started to put the sweatshirt over his head
with the other hand.
Heidi said, “What are you doing there?”
“Well, there’s going to be a mess so I’ll use the sweatshirt over my head.”
“But I want to see it. I want to see the inside of you,” she protested somewhat
seductively and with surprising vehemence.
“Ha ha, suit yourself, babe,” said Bub. He eschewed the sweatshirt and racked a
round into the chamber of his .45. He put the barrel into his mouth and pulled
the trigger. There was a huge roar with blood and brains sprayed everywhere.
Heidi put her index finger into some of the blood and tasted it. A lot of people
think that when a dog licks its master’s blood who has died that this is a sign
of insensitivity on the part of the dog but it may actually be the opposite, as
when Heidi tasted it affectionately.
Heidi even thought of tasting Bub’s brain but she hesitated and touched it
but did not taste it.
With her .38 in her hand she got up and walked to the window of the bedroom.
She looked out into the night.
Across Baseline Road a gigantic fruit processing plant was being constructed.
It was almost finished. Heidi got down on her knees and opened the window a bit.
As the cold November air rushed in she said fuck and took a couple of shots at
the fruit processing plant. She probably missed but it didn’t matter now.
When she put the barrel of the gun into her mouth like Bub had done it occurred
to her that what if she shot herself but didn’t die? She would be a vegetable.
But anyway she pulled the trigger with her thumb.
Except R.L Greene won the election!
Europe will find Christ with our Russia
Showing the way, which is her destiny --
But America? Ha. Recall how Svidrigailov
Speaks of "America" as a euphemism
For what? For suicide! Ha. So I speak of
Trump as a double of Papa Karamazov
Who in his turn speaks of Grushenka as
"My little chicken." Ha. Needless to say,
Yes, yes, yes, there is also an aspect
Of Smerdyakov in Trump -- I know this --
And the bottom line (as you say!) is this:
America must not, cannot, and will not
Be redeemed. I'm just so terribly sorry.
Russia -- the third Rome! America? Ha.
Ulysses
by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy'd
Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when
Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honour'd of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades
For ever and forever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,—
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.
There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me—
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Address delivered by Abraham Lincoln at the dedication of the
Soldiers' National Cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
November 19, 1863
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth,
on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and
dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether
that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated,
can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war.
We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final
resting place for those who here gave their lives that that
nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we
should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not
consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave
men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated
it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world
will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it
can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living,
rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which
they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.
It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task
remaining before us—that from these honored dead we
take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave
the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve
that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation,
under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that
government of the people, by the people, for the people,
shall not perish from the earth.
from "Some comments on my last book of poesy"
-- Charles Bukowski (1920-1994)
why do you drink?
I saw you at the racetrack but I didn't bother you.
I'd like to renew our relationship.
do you really stay up all night?
I can out-drink you.
you stole it from Sherwood Anderson.
did you ever meet Ezra?
I am alone and I think of you every night.
who the hell do you think you're fooling?
my tits aren't much but I've got great legs.
fuck you, man.
my wife hates you.
will you please read the enclosed poems and comment?
I am going to publish all those letters you wrote me.
you jack-off motherfucker, you're not fooling anybody.
And the Moon and the Stars and the World
Long walks at night --
that's what's good for the soul:
peeking into windows
watching tired housewives
trying to fight off
their beer-maddened husbands.
Me Against the World
when I was a kid
one of the questions asked was,
would you rather eat a bucket of shit
or drink a bucket of piss?
I thought that was easy.
"that's easy," I said, "I'll take the
piss."
"maybe we'll make you do both,"
they told me.
I was the new kid in the
neighborhood.
"oh yeah," I said.
"yeah!" they said.
there were 4 of them.
"yeah," I said, "you and whose
army?"
"we won't need no army," the
biggest one said.
I slammed my fist into his
stomach.
then all 5 of us were down on
the ground fighting.
they got in each other's way
but there were still too many
of them.
I broke free and started
running.
"sissy! sissy!" they yelled.
"going home to mama?"
I kept running.
they were right.
I ran all the way to my house,
up the driveway and onto the
porch and into the
house
where my father was beating
my mother.
she was screaming.
things were broken on the floor.
I charged my father and started swinging.
I reached up but he was too tall,
all I could hit were his
legs.
then there was a flash of red and
purple and green
and I was on the floor.
"you little prick!" my father said,
"you stay out of this!"
"don't you hit my boy!" my mother
screamed.
but I felt good because my father
was no longer hitting my
mother.
to make sure, I got up and charged
him again, swinging.
there was another flash of colors
and I was on the floor
again.
when I got up again
my father was sitting in one chair
and my mother was sitting in
another chair
and they both just sat there
looking at me.
I walked down the hall and into
my bedroom and sat on the
bed.
I listened to make sure there
weren't any more sounds of
beating or screaming
out there.
there weren't.
then I didn't know what to
do.
it wasn't any good outside
and it wasn't any good
inside.
so I just sat there.
then I saw a spider making a web
in the window.
I found a match, walked over,
lit it and burned the spider.
then I felt better.
much better.
Poem in the Manner of Charles Bukowski
-- David Lehman
You do what you want,
I’ll do what I want,
and we’ll see which one of us
gets to the twenty-dollar window
in time for the fourth race at Del Mar.
On the goddamn radio
that’s always playing
in my bitch’s kitchen,
I heard some East Coast big-shot author
say he needs to jerk off before he can write.
All is I can say is fuck that shit.
I hate poets who beg you
to like them because you feel sorry for them.
Do not feel sorry for me.
I won on Bitches’ Brew in the fourth
and went home and drank
a fifth of bourbon
and got laid.
After Bukowski
-- Mitch Sisskind
summer nights after work
bill and I played tom and john
in basketball in the park by
ford city and then we'd go
to the old gripe and groan.
bill and I were okay at
basketball while john
was terrible but they
usually won on account
of how tom was great.
in fact in two rivers wisconsin
where tom went to high school
tom is in their high school sports
hall of fame in all three sports
in two rivers wisconsin.
well one night bill and I won
in basketball but the next
night they won again and
then we went over to
the old gripe and groan
and tom said i really wanted
to win tonight on account
of you won last night so |
i didn't have a drink
last night not even a
beer and i didn't
fuck my wife
last night and not
this morning
I didn't
fuck her
neither one.
Ms Moore
Ms Millay
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Sonnet VI
by Edna St. Vincent Millay
Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare.
Let all who prate of Beauty hold their peace,
And lay them prone upon the earth and cease
To ponder on themselves, the while they stare
At nothing, intricately drawn nowhere
In shapes of shifting lineage; let geese
Gabble and hiss, but heroes seek release
From dusty bondage into luminous air.
O blinding hour, O holy, terrible day,
When first the shaft into his vision shone
Of light anatomized! Euclid alone
Has looked on Beauty bare. Fortunate they
Who, though once only and then but far away,
Have heard her massive sandal set on stone.
Poetry
by Marianne Moore
I too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all this fiddle.
Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers that there is in
it after all, a place for the genuine.
Hands that can grasp, eyes
that can dilate, hair that can rise
if it must, these things are important not because a
high-sounding interpretation can be put upon them but because they are
useful; when they become so derivative as to become unintelligible, the
same thing may be said for all of us—that we
do not admire what
we cannot understand. The bat,
holding on upside down or in quest of something to
eat, elephants pushing, a wild horse taking a roll, a tireless wolf under
a tree, the immovable critic twinkling his skin like a horse that feels a flea, the base—
ball fan, the statistician—case after case
could be cited did
one wish it; nor is it valid
to discriminate against “business documents and
school-books”; all these phenomena are important. One must make a distinction
however: when dragged into prominence by half poets, the result is not poetry,
nor till the autocrats among us can be
“literalists of
the imagination”—above
insolence and triviality and can present
for inspection, imaginary gardens with real toads in them, shall we have
it. In the meantime, if you demand on the one hand, in defiance of their opinion—
the raw material of poetry in
all its rawness, and
that which is on the other hand,
genuine, then you are interested in poetry.
A way with words.....
We Are Seven
Possibly I am the only four-time contributor to BAP who was also the head coach of a high school football team, as I was for two years in the early '70s. Coaching the team was one of the most important experiences of my life, and also one of the riskiest. If we had not won more games than we lost I would have suffered a deep and permanent "narcissistic blow." It was a kind of atavistic experience without the sensitivities that were just starting to emerge fifty years ago. There was blood, sweat, and tears, and lots of laughs also.
Walter Behrns, who's on the far left in the picture, was my assistant coach but as the athletic director of the school he was also my boss. However, Wally saw himself as a "baseball man" rather than a "football man" so I made all the decisions about our offense and defense, the starting lineups, the practice schedules, and the rest of it. Wally was like a Leopold Bloom for me when we drove around the Northwest Side scouting teams or visited the homes of Chicago policemen to recruit players. Unfortunately, like some of the young men in the picture, Wally Behrns is no longer with us. He was the most gifted funny person I've known. He beat Kenneth Koch by a field goal.
I've tried writing some sonnets about coaching....
So, we'll go no more a roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
And the moon be still as bright.
For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And love itself have rest.
Though the night was made for loving,
And the day returns too soon,
Yet we'll go no more a roving
By the light of the moon.
from "Don Juan, Canto I"
I want a hero: an uncommon want,
When every year and month sends forth a new one,
Till, after cloying the gazettes with cant,
The age discovers he is not the true one;
Of such as these I should not care to vaunt,
I’ll therefore take our ancient friend Don Juan—
We all have seen him, in the pantomime,
Sent to the devil somewhat ere his time.
Vernon, the butcher Cumberland, Wolfe, Hawke,
Prince Ferdinand, Granby, Burgoyne, Keppel, Howe,
Evil and good, have had their tithe of talk,
And fill’d their sign posts then, like Wellesley now;
Each in their turn like Banquo’s monarchs stalk,
Followers of fame, ‘nine farrow’ of that sow:
France, too, had Buonaparte and Dumourier
Recorded in the Moniteur and Courier.
Barnave, Brissot, Condorcet, Mirabeau,
Petion, Clootz, Danton, Marat, La Fayette,
Were French, and famous people, as we know:
And there were others, scarce forgotten yet,
Joubert, Hoche, Marceau, Lannes, Desaix, Moreau,
With many of the military set,
Exceedingly remarkable at times,
But not at all adapted to my rhymes.
Nelson was once Britannia’s god of war,
And still should be so, but the tide is turn’d;
There’s no more to be said of Trafalgar,
’Tis with our hero quietly inurn’d;
Because the army ’s grown more popular,
At which the naval people are concern’d;
Besides, the prince is all for the land-service,
Forgetting Duncan, Nelson, Howe, and Jervis.
Brave men were living before Agamemnon
And since, exceeding valorous and sage,
A good deal like him too, though quite the same none;
But then they shone not on the poet’s page,
And so have been forgotten:—I condemn none,
But can’t find any in the present age
Fit for my poem (that is, for my new one);
So, as I said, I’ll take my friend Don Juan.
Most epic poets plunge ‘in medias res’
(Horace makes this the heroic turnpike road),
And then your hero tells, whene’er you please,
What went before—by way of episode,
While seated after dinner at his ease,
Beside his mistress in some soft abode,
Palace, or garden, paradise, or cavern,
Which serves the happy couple for a tavern.
That is the usual method, but not mine—
My way is to begin with the beginning;
The regularity of my design
Forbids all wandering as the worst of sinning,
And therefore I shall open with a line
(Although it cost me half an hour in spinning)
Narrating somewhat of Don Juan’s father,
And also of his mother, if you’d rather.
In Seville was he born, a pleasant city,
Famous for oranges and women—he
Who has not seen it will be much to pity,
So says the proverb—and I quite agree;
Of all the Spanish towns is none more pretty,
Cadiz perhaps—but that you soon may see;
Don Juan’s parents lived beside the river,
A noble stream, and call’d the Guadalquivir.
His father’s name was Jose—Don, of course,—
A true Hidalgo, free from every stain
Of Moor or Hebrew blood, he traced his source
Through the most Gothic gentlemen of Spain;
A better cavalier ne’er mounted horse,
Or, being mounted, e’er got down again,
Than Jose, who begot our hero, who
Begot—but that ’s to come—Well, to renew:
His mother was a learned lady, famed
For every branch of every science known
In every Christian language ever named,
With virtues equall’d by her wit alone,
She made the cleverest people quite ashamed,
And even the good with inward envy groan,
Finding themselves so very much exceeded
In their own way by all the things that she did.
Her memory was a mine: she knew by heart
All Calderon and greater part of Lope,
So that if any actor miss’d his part
She could have served him for the prompter’s copy;
For her Feinagle’s were an useless art,
And he himself obliged to shut up shop—he
Could never make a memory so fine as
That which adorn’d the brain of Donna Inez.
Her favourite science was the mathematical,
Her noblest virtue was her magnanimity,
Her wit (she sometimes tried at wit) was Attic all,
Her serious sayings darken’d to sublimity;
In short, in all things she was fairly what I call
A prodigy—her morning dress was dimity,
Her evening silk, or, in the summer, muslin,
And other stuffs, with which I won’t stay puzzling.
abve: Byron in Albanian attire
In the guest bathroom a faux-marble counter
Surrounds the sink and a plastic toilet seat
Also has the appearance of black marble.
Each closet in the apartment has a switch
To ignite a bulb as the closet door opens but
In the guest bathroom the opposite is true.
When the door of the guest bathroom closes
A beguiling blue light above the door reflects
Off glass-covered leopard skin-print wallpaper.
Bathrooms exist as well in the guest bedroom,
The child's bedroom, and adjacent the walk-in
Closet of the so-called master bedroom where
A small safe in the walk-in closet might attract
Someone's brief notice on the way to the
master bedroom’s bathroom while away in the
Long hall a cedar closet becomes shrouded
In darkness as the door closes to create
An unexpected seclusion space but neither
The small safe by the master bedroom
Nor the halcyon confine of the cedar closet
Beguile like the blue light in the guest bathroom.
I have enjoyed reading on this site about Jack's outstanding work in Mark Van Doren's class at Columbia. However, while it may be true that Jack quit the football team after receiving an 'A' in the class, this is not actually why he quit the team. In 'Vanity of Dulouz,' one of his last books -- it may even have been posthumous -- Jack makes it very clear that he left the team out of frustration at the Columbia Coach. The Coach's real name was Lou Little, and I believe in the book Jack refers to him as Lou Libble. Here he is...
As the book describes it, Little (or Libble) had a tremendous fixation on a reverse play called KF-79. He had won a game with it thousands of years ago, when he was so happy he fell off his dinosaur. Now he kept insisting that Kerouac practice this play over and over, which pissed Jack off. Plus, Jack had broken his leg sometime earlier and Lou had moved him down in the depth chart, very unfairly in Jack's opinion. So Jack left the team. In fact, not long afterward he left Columbia altogether.
Jack was a good player in high school in Massachusetts, and I believe he did a postgraduate year at Horace Mann School where he also played. He was probably the best football playing writer ever, certainly the best since U. of Penn All-American T. Truxton Hare in the early years of the 20th century. 'Vanity of Dulouz' is one of the best books ever about football, although only the opening section actually deals with the game. Jack had the ability (like Homer) to magnify a small incident like a football game into something on the scale of the Normandy invasion. 'Dulouz' is really good, and you feel like you're right next to Jack on the field, or on your barstool.
However, the all time best book on football -- in fact, it's in a completely different league than any other football book -- is Don Delillo's End Zone. Which is wonderful, because unless I am mistaken Delilo did not play the game past the high school level and I'm not sure he even played high school ball. In this sense he's a kind of Stephen Crane, who wrote convincingly about combat without having taken part in it. Well, Tolstoy said if you've seen a street fight you can write about a war. If you've seen Mr. Smee, you can write about Captain Hook. If you've seen a dachshund, you can write about a Shar Pei. Trust me!
from the archive; July 27, 2008
Radio
I left it
on when I
left the house
for the pleasure
of coming back
ten hours later
to the greatness
of Teddy Wilson
"After You've Gone"
on the piano
in the corner
of the bedroom
as I enter
in the dark
from New and Selected Poems by David Lehman
