Visions and revisions

I have been tinkering with possible openings to Part III of my Takaaki poem for about 3 weeks now without very much satisfaction or success.

Today, I am going to try a different tack entirely, going back to the beginning of the story I am trying to tell and spend a few days writing from there. Those of you who have read parts I and II of the poem will (I hope) recognize the point of departure here.

I include the final stanza of part II to show the transition.

I hope you like it.


...Takaaki

Slowly shut the faucet off. He dried
His swollen fingertips on a dishtowel
With “Thanksgiving” printed on one side,
A turkey, goose—some kind of cooked, brown fowl—
Emblazoned on the other. He withdrew
Another cigarette. (There were just two,
I noticed, left inside Doraemon.)
“Are we still playing games or are we done?”
I left when he invited me to go—
Which is not to say that I objected:
I understood. I should have expected
This. Nagasaki went too far. To show
How bad I felt, I called him to surrender,
Unconditionally, the 7th of December.



Part III



Takaaki blinked at my chrysanthemums
As if I handed him preserved bullfrogs
Retrieved from one of those great pickle drums
For sale in scientific catalogs
To high school bio-teachers for dissection:
Formaldehyde free for your protection,
The ads italicize for emphasis.
Takaaki offered me a ghostly kiss
Which missed my lips entirely. “Victims
Of villainous neglect. They looked less sick
Sticking out of that black plastic
Bucket at the bodega. Cut the stems
And water them, they should perk up,” I said.
“Chrysanthemums are given to the dead

By people in Japan,” Taka-chan
Added, rather unhelpfully, I thought…

Jiggery-pokery

Lately, since moving back to New York, finding myself slightly more in the ferment of ideas, I have been going back and re-writing a few old pieces as well as continuing to write new ones. I have also been reworking the selection of poems for my first book of poems, Mnemonic Devices, based on these new and refurbished bits.

Here is a piece from a few years ago that I had totally given up on as unworkable. I am not entirely certain that is workable now, but there is something symmetrical about the structure that I rather like, so I have decided to republish it.

Essentially, the poem describes an absolute monarch, a King Lear type figure, before age, infirmity and adversity had ruined his powers of reason. If you think of him as the Western mind acting at the height of its intellectual powers, perhaps the poem will be more clear.



My Poor Fool

Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life, and thou no breath at all?
—King Lear


Heaven was just the place for him to go.
He never understood this world. You know,
We would discuss it over marmalade
And coffee—matter—how the world was made.
He would take soldiers—rectangles of toast—
And dip them in his egg—completely lost.
Most considered him a child—my half-wit.
Like any parent, my poor heart was split:

His jokes were creaky as an outhouse door,
And yet I loved him—loved him to the core.
He turned the girls to jelly. For, in his eye,
There twinkled something wild in black tie
Which frightened the officials, children, and dogs.
He painted funny faces in the fogs
Which rolled in like thunder from the sea
Those nights we kept each other company.

He tested my love constantly. He’d twist
My heart right into knots—without a sweat—
One drop of effort. For some reason I
Don’t fully comprehend, he teased me, “Why
Are you so melancholy, Lord—so blue?”
He pinged me with a pebble from his shoe.
I try to be a good king. But, of course,
My mood that morning could not have been worse.

I hanged the lad in public to remind
The peoples of planet Earth that God had died.
They stared at him like vegetables. Those
Who cried for Mercy I hanged twice. I suppose
I left a million dancing in the air
Who might have died at home. “Do not despair,”
I said, “There is no finer place to go
Than Heaven. Any fool will tell you so.”

Part III, continued.

Better?



Takaaki

Part III




This morning I awoke to light—a shade
Of pale peach without parallel. A new one.
I lay there looking at the shadows made
By an oak tree on my imagination:
Leaves danced on window blinds, my mind—a fan
Hiding a kabuki player, a young man,
Performing for his Shōgun, on a stage,
Not built of oak, but darker wood. The image—
Flirtatious as it was—as all Art is—
Seemed so substantial! No telephones
Rang, no sirens screamed, no thumps, no groans
Excited curiosity, no his-
Sing radiator ventilated steam;
Nothing—not a whisper—intervened

To disturb the universe today.
I watched my lithe, indefatigable Muse,
The light, continue coloring the day
With views from calendars: volcanic blues,
Foamy grays, pine boats, stone tsunami,
The tight red lips of geishas, tan tatami,
Black boughs suspended in such seas of pink
It made a falling cherry blossom think:
“The law of gravity does not exist;
This floating world is Heaven; you, my friends,
Bear no relation to the inky hands
Of human artisans.” We may dismiss
The final thoughts of photons as they flutter
Down. But they’re beautiful. Why bother?

The Bully

Sometimes English can be a goddam uncooperative language.

Let's just leave it at that today, shall we, friends?

Hermeneutics

Hermeneutics is not a subject we have often seen treated here on wheniwasoneandtwenty.blogspot.com, finding, as we do, the scholiastic interpretation of texts somewhat less to our aesthetic fancy than creating new texts to entertain our friends and fans and followers and pillory our interpreters.

It is a blithe, cheerfully unexamined life that we poets lead. We are not proud of it. We would never extol the chilling depths of our ignorance as a model for emulation by curious children or adults. But, in fairness, our deficiencies and delinquencies must be acknowledged, lest the studious posture of reflection be amplified to the point of easy caricature by assuming the contracted, constipated brow of thought. We wish to make it perfectly clear that we are not thoughtful or constipated.

I hope you will understand that I am only speaking for myself here, when I suggest that we are not particularly thoughtful or constipated. A diet rich in the fruits of fancy can have that effect. That other mortals, less fortunate than I, may be afflicted with these conditions, I would not dispute. To these sad, swollen souls, I open the arms of sympathy and understanding--which, astonishingly enough, are two reflexes that seem to function quite well, quite unimpaired by my total lack of intelligence. I may even possess more benevolent impulses, for all I know.

I imagine this is more a question of how strangely my brain has been wired by experience than any coherent system of thought I adopted in college. It would probably take a careful, epistemological autopsy to find out for certain. Personally, I think I can live well enough without leaving my brain in the lunch box of some zombie philosopher, thank you very much.

Part III, The Beginning, Revised

Close readers of this blog will already realize that I have attempted to treat them to a beginning for Part III of my Takaaki poem.

In that role, unfortunately, my first attempt at a Part III was not an entire success. In fact, it was SO not an entire success that I had to adapt, revise, and mechanize it so that it became part of the infantry divisions deployed in Part II. I think it feels much more at home there. We here at Wheniwasoneandtwenty like to think we possess the same special affinity for the troops shared by our illustrious founder.

...

Here is today's contribution to the world of deathless verse.

Part III


This morning I woke to light—a shade
Of pale peach without parallel. A new one.
I lay there looking at the shadows made
By an oak tree on my imagination:
Leaves danced on my blinds, my mind—a fan
Hiding a kabuki player, a young man,
Performing for the Shogun, on a stage,
Not built of oak, but darker wood. The image
Fleeting as it was—as all Art is—
Seemed so substantial! Though at home,
Alone, although not knowing what’s to come—
If I will wake to silence, tears, or kiss,
Tomorrow, in ten years, or the hereafter—
I was happy. Tomorrow didn’t matter.

The Damage

Most of the morning this Labor Day I have spent laboring over revisions to Part II of my poem, "Takaaki." I also had coffee at Expresso 77. And I took a shower. And put some laundry away. And looked at some dejected dishes in the sink. If my life were any more exciting it would probably have to be televised. Fortunately, for us, it is not.

Now, while I am not 100% certain that this section is done, I believe those things which remain to be revised are more technical, perhaps ethical problems, than matters involving the story. I don't think I will be inserting any more stanzas. But I can't be sure. Little moths of doubt may find their way into my mind and start nibbling holes in my certainty. I once tried sticking mothballs in my ears to ward them off, but everybody told me I smelled like a crazy old lady from one of Yeats's poems, so I discontinued the practice.

Still, I am going to go out a limb and call this section complete for now. And I am going to go swimming in the city.

...

For those fanatics interested in reading further, I have included today's work below. It commences with the final stanza of Part I, and then proceeds into Part II.

PLEASE NOTE: While I do not endorse any of the actions taken by the persons depicted, I have tried throughout the poem to render each historical decision and possible motivation in context. No animals were harmed in this production (except for the chicken). And I have always tried to treat the actors involved as humanely as possible. Not always successfully.

For those lamentable lapses, I sincerely apologize.


[N.B. The phrase, "Totemo oishikatta ne," may be translated, "That was really good, wasn't it?"]

Now, here we go!




*Zip* that leopard softly disappears
Around the tan-line of Takaaki’s hips.
My eyes could spend the next ten thousand years
Just bouncing on his hips. But then my lips,
Neglected and forlorn, might turn to dust
Before I could express my love. Or lust.
I must not allow a sleazy rhyme
To swallow his humanity. It's time
To treat the true Takaaki—the sweet face
I’ll sit across from in a steaming bath
Below Mt. Fuji—how he politely laughs,
How his eyes disappear, when I place
My feet in the hot water and I ask,
“Do you prefer my poems, or pale ass?”


Part II


Becoming human takes a bit of time.
Nobody knows exactly how we do it.
We classify the clock as the enzyme—
The universal catalyst. Through it
We cease to be that seemingly divine
Lump of life we call “a child.” That is fine.
We can cope with grown-ups pretty well.
What gives geneticists heartburn from Hell,
However, are the differing results
We get: when something evil, after school,
Shows up with smoky goggles at the pool
We cease to be responsible adults.
“Perhaps he’ll drown,” we hope. Hope seldom helps.
Evil makes History like Michael Phelps.

The cruel careers of our worst instincts are
Olympic in brutality, but short—
If measured by the life of stone, or star.
Were we less human, we might not resort
To Good or Evil. They’d be words—like stones
And stars. The sea would not be free of bones,
But bones would be more beautiful, like sand,
Twinkling between alien toes, stand-
Ing on Coney Island, watching the Cyclone—
The roller coaster—going up and down.
The salty waves would still drift in, surround
Small feet. Bad children would be taken home.
The sea would sparkle—conscience cold and clear.
Only you and I would disappear.

Some distance back time in this scene is set,
Upon a different island—half concrete
Half steel, accessed by elevators. Let
The windows start in Brooklyn, stretch to meet
The Empire State behind a candle (where
I sit swiveling in a leather chair),
While your eye continues traveling
Along gray glass, skyscrapers unraveling,
Until the pointy tip of the Chrysler Buil-
-ding 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.

“I’ll never tire of this view,” I say,
While blowing on my 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 usual 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—

Except for these two mushrooms which
Were pushed off to one side, not even tried—
Two shitakes, which he didn’t wish
To eat. Or share. They looked okay. I’d
Eat them. From a Doraemon candy tin
Takaaki took a cigarette. A thin
Wisp of smoke and hiss rose from his plate,
To celebrate our ninety-seventh date.
“What do you want to do, tonight,” I fired,
“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, emitting a dry laugh,
“Shall we play Scrabble then and then have bath?”

The carrot on my fork released a drop
Of curry—with a thick and oily splash.
The precise second my utensil stopped
I discerned, across the table, a flash—
Something which I hadn’t seen before—
Metallic—worth investigating?—or
Maybe not: a passenger aircraft
Hovering above New Jersey, as it passed
Behind Takaaki’s silhouette, gliding in
To Kennedy, LaGuardia, Newark—
Nothing I need necessarily report.
A Zero: nothing nasty hiding in
Those pink puffs of lead behind his head—
Those distant thunderclouds, I should have said.

“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 foot down firmly. There. Takaaki’s butt
He then 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 turmeric—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 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.”
“Well, if you want to play with words, okay.”

(Maru-chan, or “Little 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 damaged freighter out of Altair Six—
The bane of all Starfleet cadets, but one—
Who counts impossible rescues among
His greatest triumphs. Though Kirk’s victory
Pales before my own: I am the first
To work the Kobayashi into verse—
In a surprising twist of History.
Present me a no-win scenario,
I read the rules. Then change the game. Let’s go:

The Kobayashi Maru is a test
Of character. You’re not supposed to win.
It’s chess. There is no vessel in distress,
Hull breached, an icy vaccum pouring in;
The ship’s a simulation, and you lose
Whatever course of action you should choose.
The Kobayashi test presumes that death
Is built into your programming—like breath-
Ing—it is part of human DNA.
Live long and prosper? No, cadet, goodbye.
Don’t bother asking for a reason why:
Here logic has the final, fatal say.
I wonder if that Vulcan—over there—
Knows love is logic’s great nightmare.)

Takaaki tapped a second cigarette
On Dora-chan’s bountiful blue tin;
I went on eating, watching the sun set
Like some enormous, obvious omen.
A famished hush descended on the table,
Until a tulip petal quite incapable
Of hanging on landed on my placemat
Softly. Five whole minutes passed like that—
So painfully they felt more like twenty.
I drew bananas in my curry sauce
While Taka-chan established who was boss.
Then he offered, “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 cleanly by the Empire State—
I watch Takaaki work—efficient as
A machine—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, shouting over my Niagara, “You
Forgot to flush.” I lied. I sometimes do.

Before we get to Scrabble we must first
Prepare our 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 gray 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—
Enraging him with all my heart, my love.
This underhanded method of attack
Earns my palm a pair of scalding forks
Falling from the sky with deadly force.

“God damn it! What is wrong with you?”
I thundered to a non-existent jury,
“You stab 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 reply—permit my mask to slip—
Given how I’ve destabilized his lip:
It quivers like red jello, in a mold,
Before the gelatin’s had time to set
Sufficiently. Our glances briefly met
While calculating how long we could hold
Some fresh insanity from breaking out.
He placed his boiled hands beneath the spout

Allowing a cascade of cold to run,
So his corpuscles had a chance to cool.
But were they? Something horrid had begun
With Scrabble at sunset. A kind of duel:
A test of tempers turning letters—tiles—
Into finely calibrated dials.
I listened for that hard, peculiar ping
Of steel, submerged within my sonar ring:
The sound of flesh, not schools of frightened fish,
Darting down into the icy depths.
I sensed his anger, out there, sliding West,
Enveloped in the velvet dark. I wish
He hadn’t tried to lecture me before
About my Scrabble game. Now, I abhor

Violence, like any veteran
Who knows what horrors in his heart may lurk.
But I’m American, and human, and,
Against a submarine, depth-charges work
Well—like words—if you deploy them right.
But using double-meanings in a fight
Is regulated largely by extent
Of your technology. Intelligent
Tacticians will grade every syllable
Carefully, according to its power,
Testing new artillery in the shower,
Walking, waking, working—if capable—
Gathering the forces to make love.
Love is where things get a little rough.

Love is not a game like Scrabble, is it?
It’s more like dominoes. With rubble. War
May be our best analogy. I pick it
Because war has no ceiling, here, no floor:
I make love without limits. Not the sky,
The stars, the earth, the sea. I’ll tell you why:
The language I command is so advanced
It now permits me to transform romance
Into a weapon. Look how I revoke
Each kiss, caress, all pretense of pity:
Watch me turn your face into a city,
Then blow your eyes to atoms—balls of smoke.
I can fly from love to Nagasaki
In less than sixty seconds. Takaaki

Slowly shut the water off. He dried
His swollen fingertips on a fresh towel
With “Thankgiving” printed on one side,
A turkey, goose—some kind of cooked, brown fowl—
Emblazoned on the other. He withdrew
Another cigarette. (There were just two,
I noticed, left inside Doraemon.)
“Are we still playing games or are we done?”
I asked. I left when he told me to go—
Which is not to say that I objected:
I understood. I should have expected
This. Nagasaki went too far. To show
How bad I felt, I called him to surrender,
Unconditionally, the 7th of December.

Strange Children

After a few remarks from a friend about the logic of  two earlier stanzas, I have made some alterations. I am presently stitching these into my story, Takaaki.

I am not sure if this is a vast improvement on the earlier versions, but I kind of like the rhythm of the second stanza. Maybe you will find something to enjoy in it, too.


Becoming human takes a bit of time.
Nobody knows exactly how we do it.
We classify the clock as the enzyme—
The universal catalyst. Through it
We cease to be that seemingly divine
Lump of life, we call “a baby.” That is fine.
We can cope with grown-ups pretty well.
What gives geneticists heartburn from Hell,
However, are the differing results
We get: when something evil, after school,
Shows up with smoky goggles at the pool
We cease to be responsible adults.
“Perhaps he’ll drown,” we hope. Hope seldom helps.
Evil makes History like Michael Phelps.

The cruel careers of our worst instincts are
Olympic in brutality, but short—
If measured by the life of stone, or star.
Were we less human, we might not resort
To Good or Evil. They’d be words—like stones
And stars. The sea would not be free of bones,
But bones would be more beautiful, like sand,
Twinkling between alien toes, stand-
Ing on Coney Island, watching the Cyclone—
The roller coaster—going up and down.
The salty waves would still drift in, surround
Small feet. Bad children would be taken home.
The sea would sparkle—conscience cold and clear.
Only you and I would disappear.

Transitions

For those of you who have been following the tedious little developments in my Pushkin Project, the poem I now call "Takaaki," the fact that I have made some more changes to the text will not come as a welcome surprise.

In fact, I have been having second thoughts about publishing any more about the poem until it is actually complete. My mind is divided on the topic.

On the one hand, I like to have a contemporaneous record of all the changes I have made in the poem easily accessible to me (for reflection and research purposes) when I am at work, on the subway, or at the gym, which I can access on my iPhone, and think about during my idle moments.

On the other hand, from the point of view of the reader who is looking for a good time and not some kind of vatic voyeur--those metrical fetishists (like me) looking for a salacious clinical study in schizophrenia written in iambic pentameter--these changes in structure, vocabulary, story line, tone, etc. might be a bit difficult to tolerate. Without appearing to be a lunatic, I hope you can appreciate my pickle.

As my blog readership is relatively small, relatively intimate (Hi, Thomas! Hi, June! Hi, Bill!) and already relatively familiar with my wild, wind-blown ways, I think I might be able to get away with a little more than other, more popular poets.

Still, I do have these second thoughts sometimes. And I thought I would clear my conscience.

...

The alterations I have made to my magnum opus today are the following. We take up the story of Takaaki and me at the juncture where the leopard belt disappears around Takaaki's waist at the Y and we move into part II, the vicious, Hellfire and brimstone part of the poem...



*Zip* that leopard softly disappears
Around the tan-line of Takaaki’s hips.
My eyes could spend the next ten thousand years
Just bouncing on his hips. But then my lips,
Neglected and forlorn, might turn to dust
Before I could express my love. Or lust.
I must not allow a naughty rhyme
To interrupt my story. It is time
To address Takaaki—the sweet face
I sit across from in a steaming bath
Below Mt. Fuji—the small lines that laugh
Around his almond eyes, when I place
My feet in the hot water and I ask,
“Do you prefer my poems, or pale ass?”


Part II


That onsen near Mt. Fuji lies, today,
Some distance from my bathtub, like the views
Engraved in Edo era ukiyo-e—
The old volcano capped with snow, the blues,
The grays, the tiny boat, the tall tsunami,
The tight red lips of geishas, tan tatami,
Black boughs imprinted with such tragic pink
It makes the falling cherry blossom think:
"The law of gravity does not exist;
This floating world is Heaven, our islands
Bear no relation to the inky hands
Of human artisans." We may dismiss
The final thoughts of flowers as they flutter
Down. But they’re so beautiful. Why bother?

September 1st

70 years ago today things changed.



September 1st, 1939

W.H. Auden

I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.

Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.

Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.

Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism's face
And the international wrong.

Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.

The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.

From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow;
"I will be true to the wife,
I'll concentrate more on my work,"
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the deaf,
Who can speak for the dumb?

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.

Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.