I wasted time, and now doth time waste me

What can I say?

A lack of sunshine + a soul debilitating commute + a hideous workload + no time for a decent run = a lack of poetry.

This is why, last night, while looking out at the rain on my way back to Connecticut on the train, I turned to one our founder's most famous lyrics.

To An Athlete Dying Young

THE time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.

To-day, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay,
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.

Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears:

Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.

So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.

And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl's.

Although your humble author has certainly surpassed his sell-by-date for athletic glory, there may be a few things he can still accomplish in the world of words. When he can get a good night's sleep, take a walk in the woods, engineer a date, he might have more to say.

When.

Jonah

A Poet’s Prayer

If blue is a color
My eyes can get lost in,
If salt is the water
Which flows through men’s hearts,

If time is the tempest
This planet is tossed in,
Lord, let me be Jonah,
If we must choose parts.

Rain

No, I do not refer to the excellent story by Somerset Maugham, I refer instead to the horrible atmospheric phenomenon which has utterly destroyed my day off from work. Hence, the drip and puff of ash from the fire grate beneath the chimney and the large and Bloody Mary [gathering condensation] to the immediate left of this computer [cheers].

I was supposed to meet Yasu and Gonchan [woof!] in the city for a little luncheon and post-prandial perambulation in the park this afternoon, but our date was rained out. In fact, the rain was so bad in our section of southeastern Connecticut that when I sailed outside to the street to collect the floating garbage cans I had to send up a signal flare and be rescued by the cat [Meow.]

Luckily, before venturing anywhere I made provision for this contingency by stuffing my pockets full of flares and waterproof matches and sealing the cat inside her scuba gear, which

she prefers to a conventional rain slicker. [Boy, this drink is really strong.]

After being rescued by the cat, along with the aid of six surly brown rabbits and their captain, a vole, from the Coast Guard, who happened to be cruising by on a detached, motorized door that had once belonged our eccentric Scottish neighbor, Mr. Mclaren, I spent a few hours sitting on the porch, drying out, reading Tristram Shandy. [Not only strong, but spicy! Mmm!]

From which I clip the following piece of advice for the conscientious reader.

Writing, when properly managed,
(as you may be sure I think mine
is) is but a different name for conversa-
tion : As no one, who knows what he is
about in good company, would venture
to talk all ; -- so no author, who under-
stands the just boundaries of decorum
and good breeding, would presume to
think all : The truest respect which you can pay
to the reader's understanding, is
to halve this matter amicably, and leave
him something to imagine, in his turn,
as well as yourself.

For my own part, I am eternally pay-
ing him compliments of this kind, and
do all that lies in my power to keep his
imagination as busy as my own.

Alas, poor...

It is clearly impossible to have a self-portrait executed by a person other than one's self.

But there is nothing on Earth that Logic loves more than an opportunity to taunt us. Always remember, friends, that just because a thing is reported to be impossible doesn't mean it can't occasionally happen.

Sometimes, in his wild way of talking,
he would say, That gravity was an errant
scoundrel ; and he would add, -- of the
most dangerous kind too, ---- because a
sly one ; and that, he verily believed,
more honest, well-meaning people were
bubbled out of their goods and money
by it in one twelve-month, than by
pocket-picking and shop-lifting in seven.
In the naked temper which a merry heart
discovered, he would say, There was no
danger, -- but to itself : -- whereas the very
essence of gravity was design, and con-
sequently deceit ; -- 'twas a taught trick
to gain credit of the world for more sense
and knowledge than a man was worth ;
and that, with all its pretensions, -- it was
no better, but often worse, than what a
French wit had long ago defined it, -- viz.
A mysterious carriage of the body to cover
the defects of the mind ; -- which definition
of gravity, Eric, with great impru-
dence, would say, deserved to be wrote in
letters of gold.

But, in plain truth, he was a man un-
hackneyed and unpractised in the world,
and was altogether as indiscreet and
foolish on every other subject of discourse
where policy is wont to impress restraint.
Eric had no impression but one, and
that was what arose from the nature of
the deed spoken of ; which impression he
would usually translate into plain English
without any periphrasis, ---- and too
oft without much distinction of either
personage, time, or place ; -- so that when
mention was made of a pitiful or an
ungenerous proceeding, -- he never gave
himself a moment's time to reflect who
was the Hero of the piece, ---- what his
station, ---- or how far he had power to
hurt him hereafter ; -- but if it was a dirty
action, ---- without more ado, ---- The
man was a dirty fellow, -- and so on : --
And as his comments had usually the ill
fate to be terminated either in a bon mot,
or to be enliven'd throughout with some
drollery or humour of expression, it gave
wings to Eric's indiscretion. In a word,
tho' he never sought, yet, at the same
time, as he seldom shun'd occasions of
saying what came uppermost, and with-
out much ceremony ; ---- he had but too
many temptations in life, of scattering
his wit and his humour, -- his gibes and
his jests about him. ---- They were not
lost for want of gathering.

What were the consequences, and
what was Eric's catastrophe thereupon,
you will read in the next chapter.

Pens and Pencils

For all that a computer can do with numbers, there are some things that only pens, paper, and pencils really can capture.

Part of this is the tactile, easily smudged feeling we get from compressed cellulose fibers, ink and graphite. Part of it is surely sentimentality. Perhaps, in the future, when the mind interfaces with computers directly, unencumbered by a clunky, cumbersome keyboard, the future will look back on fingers through the faint film of nostalgia we reserve for broken Crayolas, fat black pencils, and chalk. Perhaps.

...

Robert Frost once observed that when you translate a poem from one language to another, what you lose is the poetry. Perhaps the same is true when you move from one artistic medium to another: from ink, pencil and paper, in this case, to binary code, and you try to keep the sensations of writing intact. Maybe.

But then how do you explain how it is possible to translate a feeling like love into words, as poets have done for centuries? Isn't it actually a bit harder to move emotions from a living heart into the lifeless structures of art, while preserving their meaning, their essence, than it is going from English to French? Or from paper to numbers? And even if we are successful in preserving some modicum of the original feeling, we lose the evanescence of the experience, the thing that makes any sensation--even sadness--so profoundly precious?

These questions are too thorny for me this Tuesday. I was up late last night, troubled by the news I received of the recent suicide of a childhood friend in Buffalo, and I had trouble sleeping. He was a handsome, intelligent, sensitive boy, good at algebra. He left a bewildered wife and a son.

When we were in high school, we would lift weights together. I nicknamed him "Josephine Gorilla" because he could do the best gorilla voice. I don't believe we ever drank together, but we did play Dungeons and Dragons, Crater Cruncher, and we would occasionally wrestle.

So, tonight, in Joe's memory, I will simply post a poem and pose the original question about translation--pencils, paper, love, art and life--and leave the answers to you.

A Change


Were you to dip into my diary
Today, you might notice a change—from pen
To pencil: a pointy mechanical
Pencil—a pointed, mechanical change.

It isn’t that I’ve given up entirely
On ballpoints, nibs, the colors black and blue—
Making that indelible impression
Both dictators and poets long to make

In different languages, perhaps, and lives,
A dozen gray centuries hence—oh no.
I am one of those prickly little folks
Susceptible to moods. I change my mind.

A more impermanent world is my province.
I have no nuclear ambitions to disclose—
Unless you count forming a family
I can find in the dark, because they glow.

No, Love is not always victorious.
But, while I possess lead for this pencil,
And your forgiveness for my many faults,
My mistakes will be easier to erase.

Stern Measures

It has been an empty few days here at WhenIwasOneandTwenty.

I tried for several hours this weekend to get back into the spirit of the Pushkin project. Alas, when Alexander Pushkin met my poetic shovekin, and I re-read what I had written, I realized that all I was doing was bullying the English language into oblivion. So, I deleted what I had written, apologized to my dictionary and closed my laptop. Enough said.

I turned to Stevie Smith for consolation. But even 73 pages of Miss Smith, with all her wonder and whimsy, have not been able to pull me out of this psychological quicksand I seem to have stumbled into. Sterner measures are called for.

Therefore, I have taken Tristram Shandy down from my shelf here at work. Wistfulness, you have been warned. Ennui, prepare to meet to Eternity. Ye congregated Powers of Depression [a flutter of paper napkins] draw up your several wills and testaments, while mind and body remain yet sound. Uncle Toby hath mounted his horrible Hobby and draws his sword against you!


...

In the meantime, while Uncle Toby and his comical cavalry are busy chasing away the blues, and while I am rinsing beet and horseradish juice from the skin of two Macintosh apples (we seem to have had an incident with a leaky lunch container in our back pack this morning) here is a little piece from a few months ago, when I was feeling friskier, more creative, and more frivolous.


Zeus


While you showered, I put down my book
And yawned. The poet Yeats sat on a chair
Regarding me intensely, with that look
He liked to give farm girls from County Clare,

Parsing their potential, as a lover—
The wayward lock of hair, that muddy shoe—
Eyes darting up and down, like bees, over
A field of Irish clover, crowned with dew.

A dark, demented rain induced the trance
In which I met his scrutiny. Still, I
Was startled when a pair of underpants—
A lightning bolt—descended from the sky,

Landing on the face of Mr. Yeats,
Jolting me out of my reverie.
Clad in a cloud of steam (or was it Grace?)
You adjusted your—artillery.

Day 24 - Give me Liberty!

Last night, as I accidentally consumed a bottle of Chardonnay after a raw day at work, I collapsed into bed and slept soundly and thoroughly until this morning--apart from one misty, nocturnal rendezvous with the moon (a la Philip Larkin).

It is no surprise, therefore, after such a poetic incident, that putting together a sonnet should be so easy. This morning's piece practically wrote itself while I was waiting for coffee.

As usual, my contribution to the Art of Prosody follows at the end of this post.




Overture


Today, as I was clipping my toenails,
I had a small epiphany. I thought,
Since I have started fabricating tales,
Once I am finished with my toes, I ought
To tell a story totally in verse,
Like Alexander Pushkin. What’s the worst
Thing which could happen to me, if I do?
I waste a month, while trying to pursue
A dream. Not a great sacrifice to make.
But digging deeper, under my big toe,
To get a stubborn piece of sock, I go
Puncturing an artery by mistake:
Administering a pedicure is not
The time to be developing your plot.

Although a gallon of fresh blood may prove
Absolutely vital later on—
Since blood is second only to true love
As an essential element of fiction—
Beyond the story of Philoctetes,
Penned by Pulitzer winner Sophocles,
Western literature is rather weak
When it comes to treating injured feet.
There is Achilles, yes, and Oedipus
Translates from ancient Greek as ‘swollen foot’—
But is my toe the basis for a book,
Except for, maybe, my podiatrist,
Dr. Silverman? It’s tough to say.
The man hates poetry. He says it’s gay.

I mention my podiatrist because—
As you have no doubt noticed here so far—
Underneath the sterile square of gauze
Stuck here to stanch my bleeding toe—there are—
I hesitate to call them ‘flaws’—it lacks
Finesse and strays too far from facts;
I’ve made changes to Pushkin’s sonnet scheme
Less fatal to the work than they might seem:
I add a fifth beat to his four foot line.
You may regard the act as criminal
Or revel in the extra syllable
Like puppies playing out in the sunshine.
Pentameter is difficult to ditch
If your first love in life was Shakespeare, which

It was for me. There’s not much I can do.
If Pushkin’s relatives should get wind
Of my two-timing ways, I doubt they’ll sue.
They’ll probably ask an unemployed cousin
To slit my throat when I’m asleep in bed.
I guess I could get used to being dead;
As long as you can promise what I wrote
Continues living in your heart, I’ll cope
With fame and martyrdom quite well. But
If anybody offers me some cash
To shut up, I’ll consider it, as
I’m always short. And having your throat cut
By former agents of the KGB
Does sound a wee bit painful, actually.

I hate pain. So, I propose a truce
Between my critics and their allies in
The Russian mob. I’ll borrow—not abuse—
A bottle from the bar—that bright horizon
Bequeathed to me—to poets everywhere
Who’ve gulped at galaxies we might compare
In liquid brilliance to a sparkling word
Of Alexander Pushkin. It’s absurd
To carry comparisons much further than
A single word: our metaphors break down
To fizzy giggles—particles of sound
That do not look like galaxies, or stand
For much of anything, beyond white noise.
It’s hard to pour the stars into your voice.



Part I


I’d love a pair of bold anfractuous rocks
Set somewhere in Cyclades—a spot
Totally removed from Time. No clocks.
I’d settle for a day in August, hot
Enough to melt an Erlenmeyer flask;
We could emerge from a cool underpass
To catch a guitar weeping, an old song,
A crowd of children shrieking, a Great Lawn,
Surrounded by people with someplace to be
Hurrying to different destinations.
“Who comes to Central Park on their vacations?”
I would implore the poor, demented bee
Circling a can of garbage going sour.
Surely, God would not begrudge an hour

Of timelessness unto Humanity—
His representatives on Earth. He must
Have made us and forgotten us. Maybe.
How else would you explain the missing bus,
The leaky awning, and the pouring rain,
This longing to be elsewhere? Hence, the plane
Landing on a distant isle in Greece—
Ahead of schedule—the Cyclades—
Bathed in Hellenic blue. And far below—
Almost invisible on the white beach—
There is a tempting red umbrella which
I am convinced belongs to me; although,
It could be a reflection from the ad
For Travelers Insurance, which is bad-

Ly flirting with me from across the street.
A fault in one of its florescent lights—
Flutter. Flicker. Blackout. And repeat:
Ad infinitum. How I hate these nights!
These buses! Water pouring through my shoe!
To say I hate New York would not be true.
We have a strange relationship, I’d say,
We need each other, sort of, in the way
A sad, sadistic cop requires a good,
But slightly stupid, buddy on the force
To buy Budweisers for him, post-divorce,
And hear how he has wrecked his life. Ours would
Make a fine, redemptive movie script,
Down to the last, cheesy tortilla chip.

For now, a cone of pink chrysanthemums—
To match the dozen frosted donuts I
Picked up from Dunkin’ for dessert—some
Blocks back, before Zeus unzipped the sky—
Will join our little shopping list. “How
Much are these flowers,” I ask the fellow
Sweeping up the petals, thorns and leaves
He has been pruning. “Not the roses—these,”
I point sharply at the mums again.
The chalkboard with the prices on it had
Suffered, like my patience, from the mad
Downpour. Slowly the young Mexican
Lifts five green fingers in front of his face—
His exhausted face. What a place

To hide such beauty. “Yes, I’ll take those, thanks,”
I mutter softly, with embarrassment,
Pulling out a wet ten, with two yanks,
Sending a quarter rolling down the pavement,
To the gutter. Pirouetting on the drain,
It spins to rest, shining in the rain
Atop a flattened cup—a blue pancake—
Supporting crooked letters which I make
Out to read, ‘Happy To Serve You.’
Exactly who is happy to be serving
Whom lies beyond my powers of observing
Because of how the cup is crushed. In lieu
Of other parties with a claim to it,
I give green fingers a five-dollar tip

And go retrieve my quarter from the cup,
Before somebody else does. In this town,
Some moments are too precious to give up.
A lucky coin can turn your life around
Like that: Fortune rota volvitur,
Rolling toward the sewer, your last quarter,
While on “The Wheel of Fortune” someone spins
Above a pyramid of oranges. Who wins?
Who cares? I have my quarter and I’m glad.
The best ten dollars that was ever spent
By any man beneath the Firmament.
Do I exaggerate? Perhaps a tad.
But just a tad. That magic emerald hand
Has turned “The Wheel” into a salsa band

By changing channels. How I love TV!
Just think of all the money that we could
Save on drugs and psychotherapy
If human hearts came with remotes? A mood
Is altered just by tapping on your nose,
And fine-tuned further, peeling off damp clothes,
And fiddling a little with a nipple.
A politician still might come and cripple
Sex, occasionally, and football
Pre-empt a dreary real-life drama
With dancing linebackers, or a bomber
Blowing up an airplane force us all
To interview a few shocked families:
But we could always turn off our TVs—

Like that. Returning richer from the gutter,
I collect my donuts and cut flowers.
It seems the thunderstorm’s begun to stutter—
Which I attribute to my quarter’s powers,
Patting the faint circle on my thigh
Embossed by my good luck. I decide
There is no point in waiting. I am wet.
I can’t get any wetter now. I bet
The guy who drives this bus is named Godot.
Assuming this, and better weather later,
We say goodbye to Jorge’s cramped bodega.
I need to meet Takaaki for a show—
War of the Worlds—at quarter after eight.
Taka-chan will shoot me if I’m late.

Takaaki entered my life as a leopard
Belt being unbuckled at the Y.
Until that Tuesday, we exchanged no word
Apart from the prim, perfunctory, “Hi,”
One naturally nods when in the shower—
Never letting eyes fall any lower
Than chin, if necessary, collarbone,
Carefully leaving ‘well enough’ alone—
Lest anything unseemly want to blur
The fragile line of bubbles separating
Really clean from curious—creating
Questions about conditioners, and whether
Grapefruit is a proper manly scent—
Even in a Thought Experiment.

I was hooked by how that feline belt
Crept through the four tight loops above his rear;
It filled me with four-letter words, which spelt,
“Don’t ruin your Moon trip.” Although sincere—
Poetic even—this injunction—it
Does not, I think, seem quite appropriate.
We’re not inside a NASA locker room—
Pristine and clean and white. We’re in a tomb
Below the ground on 47th Street,
Surrounded by abandoned towels with
A disco scent—that moldy land of myth.
I sprinkle fungal powder on my feet,
Discretely. As my fairy dust descended,
I wondered if his buckle was befriended

By anything besides his fingertips.
I could, of course, conceive of other suitors—
Shaggy carpets, pant hangers with clips
Coated in red rubber, folding doors
With tiny metal doorknobs cast from stainless
Steel. But it was none of my business
Where, after leaving his seductive waist,
His buckle might intend to hang, how chaste
These new companions, if they drink, or stink
Of jockstraps, Jockeys, sweaty socks, or hold
Silk stockings with more reverence, or cold
Hands in handcuffs, or dead cats. (I think
What one discovers on a closet hook
Can tell you more than any tell-all book.)

*Zip* that leopard softly disappears
Around the tan line of Takaaki’s hips.
I know a guy who spent a thousand years
On hips, neglecting to Chapstick his lips:
His tongue disintegrated into dust
Before he could express his love. Or lust.
I trust, the stupid use he made of Time
Will not be copied in your life. Or mine.
Now with three stanzas written on a waist,
A belt, belt loops, belt buckle, and no ass,
You might suppose your humble Author has
Lost you, Takaaki, and his mind. In case
That’s what you think, permit me now to state,
While you’ve been thinking, I’ve been on a date.


…


Around a core of elevators set
Twelve tall windows in a concrete sheet
As crumbly as the Parthenon; let
Your panorama start in Brooklyn, greet
The Empire State behind a candle (where
I sit swiveling, in a leather chair),
While your eye continues traveling
Along the glass, skyscrapers unraveling,
Until the pointy tip of the Chrysler Build-
-ing gently lifts Lexington Avenue,
Piercing a silver nitrate mist. Now you
Must let this scintillating picture fill
The space before your eyes: that is New York.
Here, I transfix a carrot with a fork.

“Introibo ad altare,” I will say,
While blowing on the steaming vegetable,
Adding, “Totemo oishikatta ne,”
Hoping that I finally am able
To tell Takaaki I enjoy his curry
Without entangling my tongue in worry.
“It’s okay,” he shrugs, quietly deferring
My compliments—as always—much preferring
A tilted head, a seated bow, the leaner
Show of manners honored in Japan,
Which can seem strange to an American
Inclined to linger too much over dinner,
Allowing food to cool and candles run.
Before I’d started, Takaaki was done—

Done like those thirty-minute Japanese
Cartoons I used to watch in Buffalo.
Star Blazers was my favorite one of these.
Five days a week, at 3:30, or so,
On rusty orange carpet I would sit
Watching an Imperial Navy ship,
Resurrected and retooled for space,
Leave planet Earth to save the human race.
At 6:00 pm, with equal bonhomie,
I’d see Toyota windshields being battered
By men from Chevrolet, lives shattered
By something known as, “The Economy.”
One always wore this map t-shirt: above
Japan it read, “Two bombs were not enough.”

Now, the two malignant mushrooms which
Sprouted from the belly of that guy
Returned as two shitakes in my dish
Of curried chicken and vegetables. Why
Was that? From a Doraemon candy tin
Takaaki took a cigarette. A thin
Wisp of smoke and hiss rose from his plate,
Typical for a twenty-seventh date.
“What do you want to do,” I inquired,
“Go bowling? I’ll do anything you like:
Get drunk? Get naked?” [Silence] “Steal a bike?”
“I swam forty laps tonight. I’m wired.”
He exhaled, letting out a little laugh,
“Shall we play Scrabble then and then have bath?”

“Have bath sounds good. But Scrabble, I will pass:
You always win, you creep. You clearly cheat,”
I said, “It’s obvious. You won the last
Nine times. And you’re not going to defeat
Me for time number ten tonight.” I put
My fork down like a foot. Takaaki’s butt
He extinguished in the drop of sauce
Which recently had claimed his match. “You lost
Because you play without strategy:
There is no need for me to cheat,” he sighed,
As if I were an insect on his thigh
Too insignificant to crush. “You see,
You always want to find interesting word—
Not the word that wins.” My mouth conferred

A moment with a chunk of chicken dyed
Cadmium by cumin in the curry—
Before I swallowed. “I have always tried
To think of Scrabble with you as purely
Educational. It is my wish
To help you in enlarging your English
Vocabulary. And defeating you—
Too easily—as surely I must do—
Would only be embarassing. I know
How sensitive to that Nihon-jin are:
Destruction on a Scrabble board would mar
Our beautiful relationship.” “Honto?
It sounds like Maru-chan’s afraid to play.”
“Maru-chan will kick your ass today.”

(Maru-chan, or Maru-maru, is
The new diminutive by which I’m known
In Japanese. I really don’t exist
In English anymore—except at home.
Maru works best as a marine suffix—
A no-win scenario from Altair Six—
The bane of all Starfleet cadets, but one—
Who counts the Kobayashi Maru among
His greatest triumphs. Though his victory
Pales before my own: I am the first
To work the Kobayashi into verse—
In a surprising twist of History.
The other meaning of maru I found
Far too un-poetical. It means “round.”)

Takaaki takes a second cigarette
From Dora-chan’s bountiful blue tin;
I go on eating, letting the sun set
Like some enormous, obvious omen;
Silence reigns across the dinner table,
Until a tulip petal incapable
Of hanging on lands on my placemat
With a soft thud. Five minutes pass like that—
So slowly that they feel more like twenty.
I trace a happy face in curry sauce
To make up for the fifteen minutes lost.
Takaaki asks, “More?” “No, I’ve had plenty,
Thanks.” I roll the tulip petal from
The mat between forefinger and thumb

Contemplatively as Takaaki takes
Dishes to the kitchen. In florescent glass—
Bisected neatly by the Empire State—
I watch Takaaki work—efficient as
Always—feeding things to Tupperware
Containers, fridge, and freezer—aware
I should be helping to put things away.
I am too lazy—what else can I say?
When I see him stationed at the sink
I swallow the pale dregs of my iced-tea,
Then saunter to the bathroom for a pee,
Leaving the door open while I tink-
Le, asking, “Would you like a little help?
Or do you want to do it all yourself?”

Before I get to Scrabble I must first
Prepare the space for battle. Clean dishes
Rest in a rack, while bubbles rise and burst
Around Takaaki as he calmly swishes
Cutlery though the hot suds. Each plate
I plan to dry I first inspect. I scrape
A shred of brown organic matter loose
From the light, lilac pattern. I peruse
Both back and front, then add it to the stack
Of china in the cabinet above—
Sliding my stiletto in with love.
Although I probably deserve a smack,
This earns my palm a pair of scalding forks,
Falling from the sky, like an Air Force.

“Sweet Jesus! What’s got into you,”
I mumble, sucking my burn injury,
“You scald me with steel forks out of the blue—
I promise to play Scrabble and—” And fury,
Rage crystallizing in Takaaki’s eye,
“I know when you’re mocking me.” I try
Not to laugh. It’s inappropriate,
Given how I’ve destabilized his lip:
It quivers like warm jello, in a mold,
Before the gelatin’s had time to set
Sufficiently. His eyebrows briefly met
While I was calculating how long he could hold
Some sweet profanity from bursting out.
He placed par-boiled hands beneath the spout,

A minute, letting the cold water run
While his temper has a chance to cool.
We are, however, nowhere near done.
We each have games to win. It may be cruel
To tease my way into his wooden tiles—
Turning words, like tiny lighted dials,
Listening for that peculiar ping
That tells me what’s inside my sonar ring
Is not a whale or school of silver fish
Darting down into the icy depths,
But is his anger, slowly slipping west,
Enveloped in the velvet dark. I wish
He hadn’t tried to lecture me before
About my Scrabble game. Now, I deplore

Violence as much as the next man
(The Reader may erase that silly smirk)
But I’m American, and human, and
I am entitled to act like a jerk
Occassionally. It’s part of my birth-right.
Try taking that away from me, a fight
For liberty will probably ensue.
Much of what I do depends on you—
The level of endorphins in my blood,
The last time my diary says I was laid—
A month before the first stone wheel was made—
Unless I’m much mistaken—which I could
Be certainly. (You’d have to ask Takaaki
If entries in our diaries agree.)

Epigrams

After the long posting yesterday (almost 5,500 words) I would like to present a few little English koans to mull over while your humble author is overwhelmed by office work.

Tomorrow we shall be returning to the world of epic, with a new stanza or two in the continuing romantic melodrama I call "the Pushkin project."



1.

Moody men, like marzipan,
Look luscious. And, made of paste,
Both peaches and pink pachyderms
Dissolve as almonds taste.


2.

Why shamble in an onion sack?
Come, tint your tears with gold!
I’ve tickets to The Slaughterhouse.
Everyone’s in it, I’m told.

3.

When all the trees turned out for spring
Clad only in their bark,
The oaks and the elms were arrested—trunks
Uprooted in the dark.


4.

In coaches carved from cinnabar
Cadavers finger clay:
While Spanish footmen feast their eyes,
These English look away.

5.

I’d rather roll down Daisy Hill,
Roll down with a ditty, and down,
And when we hit Rock Bottom, dear,
Spin the world around.

More Miss Smith

I don't know why I am in such a Stevie Smith frame of mind. There must be a reason though. Probably some impulse to escape. I think that my grandmother's death is hitting me pretty hard.  We spoke twice a day, every day, for almost 10 years.

I ordered one of Miss Smith's books last night from Amazon. Novel on Yellow Paper. I used to have a copy of this somewhere, but I seemed to have lost it. I think I bought it from Foyle's on Charing Cross Road in a pre-Blair trip to London.

Today I offer another Smith favorite.

Mr. Over


Mr. Over is dead
He died fighting and true
And on his tombstone they wrote
Over to You.

And pray who is this You
To whom Mr. Over is gone?
Oh if we knew that
We should not do wrong.

But who is this beautiful You
We all of us long for so much
Is he not our friend and our brother
Our father and such?

Yes he is this and much more
This is but a portion
A sea-drop in a bucket
Taken from the ocean.

So the voices spake
Softly above my head:
And a voice in my heart cried: Follow
Where he has led

And a devil's voice cried: Happy
Happy the dead.

Stevie Smith

I was leafing through the collected poems of Stevie Smith today, in between laundry loads, always a nice thing to do on a sunny Saturday, and I found this gem which should be dear to any poet or any other artisan who finds himself feeling down in the dumps.

To School!


Let all the little poets be gathered together in classes
And let prizes be given to them by Prize Asses
And let them be sure to call all the little poets young
And worse follow what's bad begun
But do not expect the Muse to attend this school
Why look already how far she is flown off, she is no fool.

Day 23 - Operation Petticoat

Today's contribution to the Pushkin project follows at the end...



Overture


Today, as I was clipping my toenails,
I had a small epiphany. I thought,
Since I have started fabricating tales,
Once I am finished with my toes, I ought
To tell a story totally in verse,
Like Alexander Pushkin. What’s the worst
Thing which could happen to me, if I do?
I waste a month, while trying to pursue
A dream. Not a great sacrifice to make.
But digging deeper, under my big toe,
To get a stubborn piece of sock, I go
Puncturing an artery by mistake:
Administering a pedicure is not
The time to be developing your plot.

Although a gallon of fresh blood may prove
Absolutely vital later on—
Since blood is second only to true love
As an essential element of fiction—
Beyond the story of Philoctetes,
Penned by Pulitzer winner Sophocles,
Western literature is rather weak
When it comes to treating injured feet.
There is Achilles, yes, and Oedipus
Translates from ancient Greek as ‘swollen foot’—
But is my toe the basis for a book,
Except for, maybe, my podiatrist,
Dr. Silverman? It’s tough to say.
The man hates poetry. He says it’s gay.

I mention my podiatrist because—
As you have no doubt noticed here so far—
Underneath the sterile square of gauze
Stuck here to stanch my bleeding toe—there are—
I hesitate to call them ‘flaws’ or ‘cracks’—
There are—some changes—please, put down the axe—
Which I’ve made to Pushkin’s sonnet scheme
Less fatal to the work than they might seem:
I add a fifth beat to his four foot line.
You may regard the act as criminal
Or revel in the extra syllable
Like puppies playing out in the sunshine.
Pentameter is difficult to ditch
If your first love in life was Shakespeare, which

It was for me. There’s not much I can do.
If Pushkin’s relatives should get wind
Of my two-timing ways, I doubt they’ll sue.
They’ll probably ask an unemployed cousin
To slit my throat when I’m asleep in bed.
I guess I could get used to being dead;
As long as you can promise what I wrote
Continues living in your heart, I’ll cope
With fame and martyrdom quite well. But
If anybody offers me some cash
To shut up, I’ll consider it, as
I’m always short. And having your throat cut
By former agents of the KGB
Does sound a wee bit painful, actually.

I hate pain. So, I propose a truce
Between my critics and their allies in
The Russian mob. I’ll borrow—not abuse—
A bottle from the bar—that bright horizon
Bequeathed to me—to poets everywhere
Who’ve gulped at galaxies we might compare
In liquid brilliance to a sparkling word
Of Alexander Pushkin. It’s absurd
To carry comparisons much further than
A single word: our metaphors break down
To fizzy giggles—particles of sound
That do not look like galaxies, or stand
For much of anything, beyond white noise.
It’s hard to pour the stars into your voice.


Part I

I’d like a pair of bold anfractous rocks
Set somewhere in Cyclades—a spot
Totally removed from Time. No clocks.
I’d settle for a day in August, hot
Enough to melt an Erlenmeyer flask;
We might emerge from a cool underpass
To catch a guitar weeping, an old song,
A crowd of children shrieking, a Great Lawn,
Surrounded by people with someplace to be
Hurrying to different destinations.
“Who comes to Central Park on their vacations?”
I would implore the poor, demented bee
Circling a can of garbage going sour.
Surely, God would not begrudge an hour

Of timelessness unto Humanity—
His representatives on Earth. He must
Have made us and forgotten us. Maybe.
How else would you explain the missing bus,
The leaky awning, and the pouring rain,
This longing to be elsewhere? Hence, the plane
Landing on a distant isle in Greece—
Ahead of schedule—the Cyclades—
Bathed in Hellenic blue. And far below—
Almost invisible on the white beach—
There is a tempting red umbrella which
I am convinced belongs to me; although,
It could be a reflection from the ad
For Travelers Insurance, which is bad-

Ly flirting with me from across the street.
A fault in one of its florescent lights—
Flutter. Flicker. Blackout. And repeat:
Ad infinitum. How I hate these nights!
These buses! Water pouring through my shoe!
To say I hate New York would not be true.
We have a strange relationship, I’d say,
We need each other, sort of, in the way
A sad, sadistic cop requires a good,
But slightly stupid, buddy on the force
To buy Budweisers for him, post-divorce,
And hear how he has wrecked his life. Ours would
Make a fine, redemptive movie script,
Down to the last, cheesy tortilla chip.

For now, a cone of pink chrysanthemums—
To match the dozen frosted donuts I
Picked up from Dunkin’ for dessert—some
Blocks back, before Zeus unzipped the sky—
Will join our little shopping list. “How
Much are these flowers,” I ask the fellow
Sweeping up the petals, thorns and leaves
He has been pruning. “Not the roses—these,”
I point sharply at the mums again.
The chalkboard with the prices on it had
Suffered, like my patience, from the mad
Downpour. Slowly the young Mexican
Lifts five green fingers in front of his face—
His exhausted face. What a place

To hide such beauty. “Yes, I’ll take those, thanks,”
I mutter softly, with embarrassment,
Pulling out a wet ten, with two yanks,
Sending a quarter rolling down the pavement,
To the gutter. Pirouetting on the drain,
It spins to rest, shining in the rain
Atop a flattened cup—a blue pancake—
Supporting crooked letters which I make
Out to read, ‘Happy To Serve You.’
Exactly who is happy to be serving
Whom lies beyond my powers of observing
Because of how the cup is crushed. In lieu
Of other parties with a claim to it,
I give green fingers a five-dollar tip

And go retrieve my quarter from the cup,
Before somebody else does. In this town,
Some moments are too precious to give up.
A lucky coin can turn your life around
Like that: Fortune rota volvitur,
Rolling toward the sewer, your last quarter,
While on “The Wheel of Fortune” someone spins
Above a pyramid of oranges. Who wins?
Who cares? I have my quarter and I’m glad.
The best ten dollars that was ever spent
By any man beneath the Firmament.
Do I exaggerate? Perhaps a tad.
But just a tad. That magic emerald hand
Has turned “The Wheel” into a salsa band

By changing channels. How I love TV!
Just think of all the money that we could
Save on drugs and psychotherapy
If human hearts came with remotes? A mood
Is altered just by tapping on your nose,
And fine-tuned further, peeling off damp clothes,
And fiddling a little with a nipple.
A politician still might come and cripple
Sex, occasionally, and football
Pre-empt a dreary real-life drama
With dancing linebackers, or a bomber
Blowing up an airplane force us all
To interview a few shocked families:
But we could always turn off our TVs—

Like that. Returning richer from the gutter,
I collect my donuts and cut flowers.
It seems the thunderstorm’s begun to stutter—
Which I attribute to my quarter’s powers,
Patting the faint circle on my thigh
Embossed by my good luck. I decide
There is no point in waiting. I am wet.
I can’t get any wetter now. I bet
The guy who drives this bus is named Godot.
Assuming this, and better weather later,
We say goodbye to Jorge’s cramped bodega.
I need to meet Takaaki for a show—
War of the Worlds—at quarter after eight.
Taka-chan will shoot me if I’m late.

Takaaki entered my life as a leopard
Belt being unbuckled at the Y.
Until that Tuesday, we exchanged no word
Apart from the prim, perfunctory, “Hi,”
One naturally nods when in the shower—
Never letting eyes fall any lower
Than chin, if necessary, collarbone,
Carefully leaving ‘well enough’ alone—
Lest anything unseemly rise to blur
The fragile line of bubbles separating
Really clean from curious—creating
Questions about conditioners, and whether
Grapefruit is a proper manly scent—
Even in a Thought Experiment.

I was hooked by how that feline belt
Crept through the four tight loops above his rear;
It filled me with four-letter words, which spelt,
“Don’t ruin your Moon trip.” Although sincere—
Poetic even—this injunction—it
Does not, I think, seem quite appropriate.
We’re not inside a NASA locker room—
Pristine and clean and white. We’re in a tomb
Below the ground on 47th Street,
Surrounded by abandoned towels with
A disco scent—that moldy land of myth.
I sprinkle fungal powder on my feet,
Discretely. As my fairy dust descended,
I wondered if his buckle was befriended

By anything besides his fingertips.
I could, of course, conceive of other suitors—
Shaggy carpets, pant hangers with clips
Coated in red rubber, folding doors
With tiny metal doorknobs cast from stainless
Steel. But it was none of my business
Where, after leaving his seductive waist,
His buckle might intend to hang, how chaste
These new companions, if they drink, or stink
Of jockstraps, Jockeys, sweaty socks, or hold
Silk stockings with more reverence, or cold
Hands in handcuffs, or dead cats. (I think
What one discovers on a closet hook
Can tell you more than any tell-all book.)

Zip, that leopard softly disappears
Around the tan line of Takaaki’s hips.
I had a friend who spent ten thousand years
On hips, neglecting to Chapstick his lips;
So long he labored he dissolved to dust,
Before he could express his love. Or lust.
I trust, the stupid use he made of Time
Will not be copied in your life. Or mine.
Now with three stanzas written on a waist,
A belt, belt loops, belt buckle, and no ass,
You might suppose your humble Author has
Lost you, Takaaki, and his mind. In case
That’s what you think, permit me now to state,
While you’ve been thinking, I’ve been on a date.


…


Around a core of elevators set
Twelve tall windows in a concrete sheet
As crumbly as the Parthenon; let
Your panorama start in Brooklyn, greet
The Empire State behind a candle (where
I sit sweating, in a sticky chair),
While your eye continues traveling
Along the glass, skyscrapers unraveling,
Until the pointy tip of the Chrysler Build-
-ing gently lifts Lexington Avenue,
Piercing a silver nitrate mist. Now you
Must let this scintillating picture fill
The space before your eyes: that is New York.
Here, I transfix a carrot with a fork.

“Introibo ad altare,” I will say,
While blowing on the steaming vegetable,
Adding, “Totemo oishikatta ne,”
Hoping that I finally am able
To tell Takaaki I enjoy his curry
Without entangling my tongue in worry.
“It’s okay,” he shrugs, quietly deferring
My compliments—as always—much preferring
A tilted head, a seated bow, the leaner
Show of manners honored in Japan,
Which can seem strange to an American
Inclined to linger too much over dinner,
Allowing food to cool and candles run.
Before I’d started, Takaaki was done—

Done like those thirty-minute Japanese
Cartoons I used to watch in Buffalo.
Star Blazers was my favorite one of these.
Five days a week, at 3:30, or so,
On rusty orange carpet I would sit
Watching an Imperial Navy ship,
Resurrected and retooled for space,
Leave planet Earth to save the human race.
At 6:00 pm, with equal bonhomie,
I’d see Toyota windshields being battered
By men from Chevrolet, lives shattered
By something known as, “The Economy.”
One always wore this map t-shirt: above
Japan it read, “Two bombs were not enough.”

Now, the two malignant mushrooms which
Sprouted from the belly of that guy
Returned as two shitakes in my dish
Of curried chicken and vegetables. Why
Was that? From a Doraemon candy tin
Takaaki took a cigarette. A thin
Wisp of smoke and hiss rose from his plate,
Typical for a twenty-seventh date.
“What do you want to do,” I inquired,
“Go bowling? I’ll do anything you like:
Get drunk? Get naked?” [Silence] “Steal a bike?”
“I swam forty laps tonight. I’m wired.”
He exhaled, letting out a little laugh,
“Shall we play Scrabble then and then have bath?”

“Have bath sounds good. But Scrabble, I will pass:
You always win, you creep. You clearly cheat,”
I said, “It’s obvious. You won the last
Nine times. And you’re not going to defeat
Me for time number ten tonight.” I put
My fork down like a foot. Takaaki’s butt
He extinguished in the drop of sauce
Which recently had claimed his match. “You lost
Because you play without strategy:
There is no need for me cheat on you,” he sighed,
As if I were an insect on his thigh
Too insignificant to crush. “You see,
You always want to find interesting word—
Not the word that wins.” My fork conferred

A moment with a chunk of chicken dyed
Cadmium by cumin in the curry—
Before I ate it. “I have always tried
To think of Scrabble with you as purely
Educational. It is my wish
To help you in enlarging your English
Vocabulary. And defeating you—
Too easily—as surely I must do—
Would only be embarrassing. I know
How sensitive to that Nihon-jin are:
Destruction on a Scrabble board would mar
Our beautiful relationship.” “Honto?
It sounds like Maru-chan’s afraid to play.”
“Maru-chan will kick your ass today.”

(Maru-chan, or Maru-maru, is
The new diminutive by which I’m known
In Japanese. I really don’t exist
In English anymore—except at home.
Maru works best as a marine suffix—
A simulated ship from Altair Six—
The bane of all Starfleet cadets, but one—
Who counts the Kobayashi Maru among
His greatest triumphs. Though his victory
Pales before my own: I am the first
To work the Kobayashi into verse—
In a surprising twist of History.
The other meaning of maru I found
A lot less poetical. It means “round.”)

Takaaki takes a second cigarette
From Dora-chan’s bountiful blue tin;
I go on eating, letting the sun set
Like some enormous, obvious omen;
Silence reigns across the dinner table,
Until a tulip petal incapable
Of hanging on lands on my placemat
With a soft thud. Five minutes pass like that—
So slowly that they feel more like twenty.
I trace a happy face in curry sauce
To make up for the fifteen minutes lost.
Takaaki asks, “More?” “No, I’ve had plenty,
Thanks.” I roll the tulip petal from
The mat between forefinger and thumb

Contemplatively as Takaaki takes
Dishes to the kitchen. In florescent glass—
Bisected neatly by the Empire State—
I watch Takaaki work—efficient as
A robot—feeding things to Tupperware
Containers, fridge, and freezer—aware
I should be helping to put things away.
I am lazy—what else can I say?
When I see him stationed at the sink
I swallow the pale dregs of my iced-tea,
Then saunter to the bathroom for a pee,
Leaving the door open while I tink-
Le, asking, “Would you like a little help?
Or would you like to do it all yourself?”

Before I get to Scrabble I must first
Prepare the space for battle. Clean dishes
Rest in a rack, while bubbles boil and burst
Around Takaaki as he scowls and swishes
Our utensils though the suds. The plate
I plan to dry I first inspect. I scrape
A shred of orange matter that comes loose
From the light, lilac pattern. I peruse
Both back and front, then add it to the stack
Of china in the cabinet above—
Sliding my stiletto in with love.
Although I probably deserve a smack,
This earns my palm a pair of scalding forks,
Prepared for me, like papers of divorce.

“Jesus! What has gotten into you?”
I roar at Heaven, startling the jury,
“You scald me with steel forks out of the blue—
I promise to play Scrabble and—” And fury,
Rage crystallizing in Takaaki’s eye,
“I know when you’re mocking me.” I try
Not to laugh. It’s inappropriate,
Given how I’ve destabilized his lip:
It quivers like warm jello, in a mold,
Before the gelatin’s had time to set
Around the shredded carrots, cabbage, et
Cetera. Now, how long can he hold
Some sweet profanity from bursting out?
He rinses scarlet hands beneath the spout,

A minute, letting the cold water run
While his fingers have a chance to cool.
I am, however, nowhere near done.
I have a game to win. It may be cruel
To tease my way into his wooden tiles—
Turning words, like tiny lighted dials,
Listening for that peculiar ping
That tells me what's inside my sonar ring
Is not a whale or school of silver fish
Darting down into the icy depths,
But is his anger, slowly slipping west,
Enveloped in the velvet dark. I wish
He hadn’t tried to lecture me before
About my Scrabble game. This means war.

Reset

Due to the sudden, unexpected death of my grandmother, I was forced to interrupt blogging for the past 10 days, suspending the Pushkin project entirely.

Today I added another stanza and re-wrote a few faulty lines. I am not sure I am going to be able to keep up the pace of adding a new stanza every day, as I tried to do in May, but I am going to try to continue telling my little story as best I can.

I hope you will understand.

Today's addition, as usual, falls at the end of this posting.



Overture


Today, as I was clipping my toenails,
I had a small epiphany. I thought,
Since I have started fabricating tales,
Once I am finished with my toes, I ought
To tell a story totally in verse,
Like Alexander Pushkin. What’s the worst
Thing which could happen to me, if I do?
I waste a month, while trying to pursue
A dream. Not a great sacrifice to make.
But digging deeper, under my big toe,
To get a stubborn piece of sock, I go
Puncturing an artery by mistake:
Administering a pedicure is not
The time to be developing your plot.

Although a gallon of fresh blood may prove
Absolutely vital later on—
Since blood is second only to true love
As an essential element of fiction—
Beyond the story of Philoctetes,
Penned by Pulitzer winner Sophocles,
Western literature is rather weak
When it comes to treating injured feet.
There is Achilles, yes, and Oedipus
Translates from ancient Greek as ‘swollen foot’—
But is my toe the basis for a book,
Except for, maybe, my podiatrist,
Dr. Silverman? It’s tough to say.
The man hates poetry. He says it’s gay.

I mention my podiatrist because—
As you have no doubt noticed here so far—
Underneath the sterile square of gauze
Stuck here to stanch my bleeding toe—there are—
I hesitate to call them ‘flaws’ or ‘cracks’—
There are—some changes—please, put down the axe—
Which I’ve made to Pushkin’s sonnet scheme
Less fatal to the work than they might seem:
I add a fifth beat to his four foot line.
You may regard the act as criminal
Or revel in the extra syllable
Like puppies playing out in the sunshine.
Pentameter is difficult to ditch
If your first love in life was Shakespeare, which

It was for me. There’s not much I can do.
If Pushkin’s relatives should get wind
Of my two-timing ways, I doubt they’ll sue.
They’ll probably ask an unemployed cousin
To slit my throat when I’m asleep in bed.
I guess I could get used to being dead;
As long as you can promise what I wrote
Continues living in your heart, I’ll cope
With fame and martyrdom quite well. But
If anybody offers me some cash
To shut up, I’ll consider it, as
I’m always short. And having your throat cut
By former agents of the KGB
Does sound a wee bit painful, actually.

I hate pain. So, I propose a truce
Between my critics and their allies in
The Russian mob. I’ll borrow—not abuse—
A bottle from the bar—that bright horizon
Bequeathed to me—to poets everywhere
Who’ve gulped at galaxies we might compare
In liquid brilliance to a sparkling word
Of Alexander Pushkin. It’s absurd
To carry comparisons much further than
A single word: our metaphors break down
To fizzy giggles—particles of sound
That do not look like galaxies, or stand
For much of anything, beyond white noise.
It’s hard to pour the stars into your voice.


Part I

I’d like a pair of bold anfractous rocks
Set somewhere in Cyclades—a spot
Totally removed from Time. No clocks.
I’d settle for a day in August, hot
Enough to melt an Erlenmeyer flask;
We might emerge from a cool underpass
To catch a guitar weeping, an old song,
A crowd of children shrieking, a Great Lawn,
Surrounded by people with someplace to be
Hurrying to different destinations.
“Who comes to Central Park on their vacations?”
I would implore the poor, demented bee
Circling a can of garbage going sour.
Surely, God would not begrudge an hour

Of timelessness unto Humanity—
His representatives on Earth. He must
Have made us and forgotten us. Maybe.
How else would you explain the missing bus,
The leaky awning, and the pouring rain,
This longing to be elsewhere? Hence, the plane
Landing on a distant isle in Greece—
Ahead of schedule—the Cyclades—
Bathed in Hellenic blue. And far below—
Almost invisible on the white beach—
There is a tempting red umbrella which
I am convinced belongs to me; although,
It could be a reflection from the ad
For Travelers Insurance, which is bad-

Ly flirting with me from across the street.
A fault in one of its florescent lights—
Flutter. Flicker. Blackout. And repeat:
Ad infinitum. How I hate these nights!
These buses! Water pouring through my shoe!
To say I hate New York would not be true.
We have a strange relationship, I’d say,
We need each other, sort of, in the way
A sad, sadistic cop requires a good,
But slightly stupid, buddy on the force
To buy Budweisers for him, post-divorce,
And hear how he has wrecked his life. Ours would
Make a fine, redemptive movie script,
Down to the last, cheesy tortilla chip.

For now, a cone of pink chrysanthemums—
To match the dozen frosted donuts I
Picked up from Dunkin’ for dessert—some
Blocks back, before Zeus unzipped the sky—
Will join our little shopping list. “How
Much are these flowers,” I ask the fellow
Sweeping up the petals, thorns and leaves
He has been pruning. “Not the roses—these,”
I point sharply at the mums again.
The chalkboard with the prices on it had
Suffered, like my patience, from the mad
Downpour. Slowly the young Mexican
Lifts five green fingers in front of his face—
His exhausted face. What a place

To hide such beauty. “Yes, I’ll take those, thanks,”
I mutter softly, with embarrassment,
Pulling out a wet ten, with two yanks,
Sending a quarter rolling down the pavement,
To the gutter. Pirouetting on the drain,
It spins to rest, shining in the rain
Atop a flattened cup—a blue pancake—
Supporting crooked letters which I make
Out to read, ‘Happy To Serve You.’
Exactly who is happy to be serving
Whom lies beyond my powers of observing
Because of how the cup is crushed. In lieu
Of other parties with a claim to it,
I give green fingers a five-dollar tip

And go retrieve my quarter from the cup,
Before somebody else does. In this town,
Some moments are too precious to give up.
A lucky coin can turn your life around
Like that: Fortune rota volvitur,
Rolling toward the sewer, your last quarter,
While on “The Wheel of Fortune” someone spins
Above a pyramid of oranges. Who wins?
Who cares? I have my quarter and I’m glad.
The best ten dollars that was ever spent
By any man beneath the Firmament.
Do I exaggerate? Perhaps a tad.
But just a tad. That magic emerald hand
Has turned “The Wheel” into a salsa band

By changing channels. How I love TV!
Just think of all the money that we could
Save on drugs and psychotherapy
If human hearts came with remotes? A mood
Is altered just by tapping on your nose,
And fine-tuned further, peeling off damp clothes,
And fiddling a little with a nipple.
A politician still might come and cripple
Sex, occasionally, and football
Pre-empt a dreary real-life drama
With dancing linebackers, or a bomber
Blowing up an airplane force us all
To interview a few shocked families:
But we could always turn off our TVs—

Like that. Returning richer from the gutter,
I collect my donuts and cut flowers.
It seems the thunderstorm’s begun to stutter—
Which I attribute to my quarter’s powers,
Patting the faint circle on my thigh
Embossed by my good luck. I decide
There is no point in waiting. I am wet.
I can’t get any wetter now. I bet
The guy who drives this bus is named Godot.
Assuming this, and better weather later,
We say goodbye to Jorge’s cramped bodega.
I need to meet Takaaki for a show—
War of the Worlds—at quarter after eight.
Taka-chan will shoot me if I’m late.

Takaaki entered my life as a leopard
Belt being unbuckled at the Y.
Until that Tuesday, we exchanged no word
Apart from the prim, perfunctory, “Hi,”
One naturally nods when in the shower—
Never letting eyes fall any lower
Than chin, if necessary, collarbone,
Carefully leaving ‘well enough’ alone—
Lest anything unseemly rise to blur
The fragile line of bubbles separating
Really clean from curious—creating
Questions about conditioners, and whether
Grapefruit is a proper manly scent—
Even in a Thought Experiment.

I was hooked by how that feline belt
Crept through the four tight loops above his rear;
It filled me with four-letter words, which spelt,
“Don’t ruin your Moon trip.” Although sincere—
Poetic even—this injunction—it
Does not, I think, seem quite appropriate.
We’re not inside a NASA locker room—
Pristine and clean and white. We’re in a tomb
Below the ground on 47th Street,
Surrounded by abandoned towels with
A disco scent—that moldy land of myth.
I sprinkle fungal powder on my feet,
Discretely. As my fairy dust descended,
I wondered if his buckle was befriended

By anything besides his fingertips.
I could, of course, conceive of other suitors—
Shaggy carpets, pant hangers with clips
Coated in red rubber, folding doors
With tiny metal doorknobs cast from stainless
Steel. But it was none of my business
Where, after leaving his seductive waist,
His buckle might intend to hang, how chaste
These new companions, if they drink, or stink
Of jockstraps, Jockeys, sweaty socks, or hold
Silk stockings with more reverence, or cold
Hands in handcuffs, or dead cats. (I think
What one discovers on a closet hook
Can tell you more than any tell-all book.)

Zip, that leopard softly disappears
Around the tan line of Takaaki’s hips.
I had a friend who spent ten thousand years
On hips, neglecting to Chapstick his lips;
So long he labored he dissolved to dust,
Before he could express his love. Or lust.
I trust, the stupid use he made of Time
Will not be copied in your life. Or mine.
Now with three stanzas written on a waist,
A belt, belt loops, belt buckle, and no ass,
You might suppose your humble Author has
Lost you, Takaaki, and his mind. In case
That’s what you think, permit me now to state,
While you’ve been thinking, I’ve been on a date.


…


Around a core of elevators set
Twelve tall windows in a concrete sheet
As crumbly as the Parthenon; let
Your panorama start in Brooklyn, greet
The Empire State behind a candle (where
I sit sweating, in a sticky chair),
While your eye continues traveling
Along the glass, skyscrapers unraveling,
Until the pointy tip of the Chrysler Build-
-ing gently lifts Lexington Avenue,
Piercing a silver nitrate mist. Now you
Must let this scintillating picture fill
The space before your eyes: that is New York.
Here, I transfix a carrot with a fork.

“Introibo ad altare,” I will say,
While blowing on the steaming vegetable,
Adding, “Totemo oishikatta ne,”
Hoping, after five months, I am able
To tell Takaaki I enjoy his curry
Without entangling my tongue in worry.
“It’s okay,” he shrugs, quietly deferring
My compliments—as always—much preferring
A tilted head, a seated bow, the leaner
Show of manners honored in Japan,
Which can seem strange to an American
Inclined to linger too much over dinner,
Allowing food to cool and candles run.
Before I’d started, Takaaki was done—

Done like those thirty-minute Japanese
Cartoons I used to watch in Buffalo.
Star Blazers was my favorite one of these.
Five days a week, at 3:30, or so,
On rusty orange carpet I would sit
Watching an Imperial Navy ship,
Resurrected and retooled for space,
Leave planet Earth to save the human race.
At 6:00 pm, with equal bonhomie,
I’d see Toyota windshields being battered
By men from Chevrolet, lives shattered
By something known as, “The Economy.”
One always wore this map t-shirt: above
Japan it read, “Two bombs were not enough.”

Now, the two malignant mushrooms which
Sprouted from the belly of that guy
Returned as two shitakes in my dish
Of curried chicken and vegetables. Why
Was that? From a Doraemon candy tin,
Takaaki took a cigarette. A thin
Wisp of smoke and hiss rose from his plate,
Typical for a twenty-seventh date.
“What do you want to do,” I inquired,
“Go bowling? I’ll do anything you like:
Get drunk? Get naked?” [Silence] “Steal a bike?”
“I swam forty laps tonight. I’m wired.”
He exhaled, letting out a little laugh,
“Shall we play Scrabble then and then have bath?”

“Have bath sounds good. But Scrabble, I will pass:
You always win, you creep. You clearly cheat,”
I said, “It’s obvious. You won the last
Nine times. And you’re not going to defeat
Me for time number ten tonight.” I put
My fork down like a foot. Takaaki’s butt
He extinguished in the drop of sauce
Which recently had claimed his match. “You lost
Because you play without strategy:
There is no need for me cheat on you,” he sighed,
As if I were an insect on his thigh
Too insignificant to crush. “You see,
You always want to find interesting word—
Not the word that wins.” My fork conferred

A moment with a chunk of chicken dyed
Cadmium by cumin in the curry—
Before I ate it. “I have always tried
To think of Scrabble with you as purely
Educational. It is my wish
To help you in enlarging your English
Vocabulary. And defeating you—
Too easily—as surely I must do—
Would only be embarrassing. I know
How sensitive to that Nihon-jin are:
Destruction on a Scrabble board would mar
Our beautiful relationship.” “Honto?
It sounds like Maru-chan’s afraid to play.”
“Maru-chan will kick your ass today.”

(Maru-chan, or Maru-maru, is
The new diminutive by which I’m known
In Japanese. I really don’t exist
In English anymore—except at home.
Maru works best as a marine suffix—
A simulated ship from Altair Six—
The bane of all Starfleet cadets, but one—
Who counts the Kobayashi Maru among
His greatest triumphs. Though his victory
Pales before my own: I am the first
To work the Kobayashi into verse—
In a surprising twist of History.
I love a nice no-win scenario:
It gives me a chance to show-off.) So,

Takaaki takes a second cigarette
From Dora-chan’s bountiful blue tin;
I go on eating, letting the sun set
Like some enormous, obvious omen;
Silence reigns across the dinner table,
Until a tulip petal incapable
Of hanging on lands on my placemat
With a soft thud. Five minutes pass like that—
So slowly that they feel more like twenty.
I trace a happy face in curry sauce
To make up for the fifteen minutes lost.
Takaaki asks, “More?” “No, I’ve had plenty,
Thanks.” I roll the tulip petal from
The mat between forefinger and thumb

Contemplatively as Takaaki takes
Dishes to the kitchen. In florescent glass—
Bisected neatly by the Empire State—
I watch Takaaki work—efficient as
A robot—feeding things to Tupperware
Containers, fridge, and freezer—aware
I should be helping to put things away.
I am lazy—what else can I say?
When I see him stationed at the sink
I swallow the thin dregs of my iced-tea,
Then saunter to the bathroom for a pee,
Leaving the door open while I tink-
Le, asking, “Would you like some help?
Or would you like to do it all yourself?”

Before I get to Scrabble I must first
Prepare the space for battle. Clean dishes
Rest in a rack, while bubbles boil and burst
Around Takaaki as he sweats and squishes
A soggy sponge in his red fist. The plate
I plan to dry I first inspect. I scrape
A shred of orange matter that comes loose
From the light, lilac pattern. I peruse
Both back and front, then add it to the stack
Of china in the cabinet above—
Sliding my stiletto in with love.
Although I probably deserve a smack,
This earns my palm a pair of scalding forks,
Drawn up for me, like papers of divorce.

“Hey, that hurts! What’s got into you,”
I whimper to a granite-faced jury,
“You scald me with steel forks out of the blue—
I promise to play Scrabble and—” And fury,
Rage crystallizing in Takaaki’s eyes,
“I know when you are mocking me.” Surprised,
I laugh more than is appropriate
Given what’s going on with his lip:
It quivers like green jello, in a mold,
Before the gelatin’s had time to set
Around the shredded carrots, cabbage, et
Cetera. Now, how long could he hold
Some choice profanities from bursting out?
He rinsed a wooden spoon beneath the spout.