The Cashier

Before I go any further, I have a Statement to make to that cute Cashier, which may also be of some interest to the general Reader. I freely acknowledge a Self-Interested Motive in turning philosophickal here. One turns thoughtful toward the End of Life. Sometimes at the Beginning. Occasionally, too, in medias res, while buying Condoms at Duane-Reade, one looks forward toward the End. Sometimes, also, the Register closes, and the cute Cashier suddenly steps out for a Smoke, or a Trip to Taco Bell, and one is forced—along with hundreds of other Customers—into another Line—the only Line now open—the one manned by a nymphomaniac Gorgon—and a Return to the Beginning. This last Circumstance is what the bony Indian Fakir regards as his Reward for a Life of patient Self-Destruction, Reincarnation. This is what we in the more corpulent Lands of Christendom presently call, Hell. It is this Hellacious Present that I am most concerned with Here. The Present is what makes me think that my Fifteen Seconds of Fame at Duane-Reade might be the ideal Juncture in Time to interject a Detail—relate an Anecdote—tell a Story—that will illuminate—I hope not as an Epitaph—one or two Aspects of the Chaos which orders Human Life. From one Angle, I know, the following Remarks will read like a Fruit Salad. From another, they will appear as clear as Clotted Cream. I am coming to Terms with my Limitations. I am over 40, and the Truth of the Situation is hard to bear. As Mr. Eliot suggests, we cannot endure too much Reality. And the Reality for me is that I cannot endure too much Mr. Eliot. I know that eventually I will reach the Cash Register. Despite the best Efforts of Mr. Pound, “The Wasteland” will forever remain mired in the miserable muck of Passchendaele, a hopeless Mess. So, we shall pass over “The Wasteland”, as we pass over the Twentieth Century, as the Fragrance of Mountain Sage passes over a Prairie Cowpat. How do I justify this Journey? Easily. Time passes. Or, in the later and more learned Words of Mr. Eliot, “Time present and time past / Are both perhaps present in time future…” They are indeed, Sir. Because, you see, that Cute Cashier only popped out for a Pee. He actually returned from the Toilet to this Poem about 150 Words ago, not long after the Gorgon arrived. They are now standing side by side and things are moving in parallel very fast. I would have told you earlier, but I had to finish my Thought: all parallel Lines converge at Infinity. And the next lucky Customer in one of those Lines is you. Or me.

Ex Nihilo

I wrote this about 8 years ago and I have never been able to find a place to put it. It is written in the rhyme scheme of ottava rima (abababcc, for you poetry junkies), and I always hoped that I would be able to integrate it into a larger poem.  But it seems to stand rather shakily on its own.

So, I publish it here, out of context, in the the hope that it will find a place on the Internet, if not in your heart or in your memory.


New York: A Fragment


Nothing in this City lasts; nothing is

       This dust, impossible to dust away—

Pollen, maybe, pulverized asbestos—
       The gulf between today and yesterday.
But nothing’s more insidious than this—
       This feeling of despair—what can I say?
Yet out of nothing, next to nothing—silt—
You and I, our Universe is built.

Pandora's Box

Before we get to my slaughter at the hands of a lunatic, the bloodbath alluded to in the closing paragraphs of yesterday’s post, I have a statement to make to my murderer, which may also be of some interest to the sympathetic reader.

I freely acknowledge a self-interested motive in turning philosophical here. One turns thoughtful toward the End of life. Sometimes at the Beginning. Occasionally, too, in media res, when we look toward the End. Sometimes we go back to the Beginning. 

Our eyes roll dizzily around in our heads in ever more anal concentric circles looking for something less scary to study, something in between Beginnings and Endings, something that doesn’t have quite so much darkness on either sid

e: something warm and wonderful, womb-like in its wetness, smelling faintly of security: something very unlike the misty, moldy Present.

The Present is what makes me think that the day of my destruction might be the ideal juncture to interject a detail— relate an anecdote—tell a story—that will illuminate—I hope not as an epitaph—one or two aspects of the chaotic style which orders my life.

From one angle, I know, my remarks read like a fruit salad. From another, they appear as clear as a chocolate parfait. I am coming to terms with my limitations, I am over 40, but the saccharine truth of the situation is hard to bear.  As Eliot says, we cannot endure too much Reality. The packages all say it gives you cancer. Fie on't, I say. Fie. Man may yet find a cure for cancer.  He has done more remarkable things.

My only fear is that, before we find a satisfactory treatment for the terrors of Reality, the madness behind my methodology in confronting them will bore the reader into oblivion and my voice will be silenced forever. This is the risk all writers take when they open their mouths.

MY STRATEGY FOR IMMORTALITY, METHODIZ'D:

Since, I am told, as a poet, a voice is all I possess, I will rely upon my mouth. My tongue. My teeth.  I plan to pluck arrows out of thin air with my teeth and hurl them directly at the heart of Death with a bow I have 

improvised from my two lips. I have seen Cupid do this before, in paintings by Poussin, so I am sure the action of Love is not without parallel in military history.  

I have always preferred entry through the heart rather than the head, though not for Romantic reasons, as you might too hastily conclude, but for practical, strategic ones.  Through the conduit of the ear, my words might get lost in the skull, or be deflected to a different destination by some voice in the chorus of ambient sounds you hear in a steam bath: the hissing, the farting, the coughing, the panting, the lute.

It is a risky proposition, I grant you. The farts may overwhelm me. They may asphyxiate the lutenist, too. The farts may overwhelm us all.  Death is a desperate man, when he is aroused; filled with desire, he will stop at nothing to get his way.  For him, the fart is not foul: it is an aphrodisiac.

...

Ridiculous, you say, Sir, what you are proposing is total insanity.

Ho, ho, I say, applying a clothes pin to my nose, I believe I have more reason than you, Sir, to laugh.

...

If you have the courage to face Reality, then, read on.

...

Last year, while my cousin, Lisa, was attending a summer conference on Eschatology, the study of Apocalypses, on the beautiful island of Bimini, I was lucky enough to spend a week at her chalet in Springfield, watering plants. It was in the sober silence of her home (Lisa is a teetotaler), where I first took the opportunity of a captive audience to read a plant some of my work.

At the time, I was deeply involved in correcting the pre-publication proofs of a ten thousand line poem I had spent twenty years writing--a modern Iliad--narrating, in minute, poignant detail, the slow dissolution of throat lozenges in modern American life—an effort, I might add, which an anonymous reviewer in The New York Times identified as, “entirely without precedent in the annals of Epic poetry: it is a work designed—not for reading or for recitation—but for use as a weapon of mass destruction. The author should be shot.”

My cousin’s ficus tree, obviously possessing a finer and more delicately attuned poetic sensibility than the green little idiot from The Times, greeted my rough hexameters with a more forgiving ear: it clapped. Take that, New York Times.

Indeed, speaking of the times [Lower case, please, printer], my cousin phoned just this morning to say that her ficus flourishes beautifully. It is larger and more luxurious than ever. She thanked me several times, again, for taking care of it, before mentioning, again, that it really hasn’t said very much to her, since she returned from that apocalyptic conference on Bimini. It sits in a cracked orange pot all day, in the parlor, in the sunshine, in a state of photosynthetic bliss, producing oxygen for her, yes, and a meaningless cascade verses about a bird—this thrush—busy building a nest in Lisa’s mulberry bushes, just outside the window.

…

Unlike Lisa's ficus tree, I try to ration my imaginative resources, reserving a portion for use in the Future, should we be so fortunate as to enjoy one together. When necessary—like now—I will borrow against my dwindling intellectual capital. When I exhaust my credit at the Bank, I will cheerfully steal. Let other poets worry and waste their lives with their hands in their pockets, searching for meaning—feeling for nickels among the particles of lint. I just want to be happy, and, if possible, rich. And where happiness is concerned, you never pass up an opportunity for theft.

For instance. Two weeks ago I visited an estate sale in the billionaire suburb of Greenwich, Connecticut. Skipping breakfast, I walked from the train station, arriving at the great iron gates guarding the mansion early, for a Sunday, around 8:00 am.   There, I spent a lazy morning stationed at an antique Queen Anne walnut secretary [suggested bid: $15,000.00]. I stood there for four hours, with my book bag between my legs, pawing though old shoe boxes full of cracked, broken, and purple-mold-spotted sepia-toned family portraits [price: 25¢/dozen].

Until the previous week, these people had belonged to a bachelor, a Mr. Smith, originally from Bath, England.  He had been a financier, whose speciality was mortgage-backed securities.  I had, on a few occasions, been his caddy.  We were familiar, as business associates are, but not overly so.  He once bought me dinner in the clubhouse. I wouldn't call us friends.  He left me nothing in his will.  He left no will at all. According to the blue postcard which I received in the mail from the outfit handling the Auction of his effects, he and his relatives now belonged to the State. Which I took to mean, by democratic extension, as an enfranchised voter, they belonged me. I was ecstatic.

In truth, the legal status with respect to claims on properties confiscated by the State of Connecticut and a resident of New York, such as myself, are a little vague. But the death of Mr. Smith filled me with joy and generosity. I would let Connecticut keep the expensive walnut secretary, the surrounding woods and lands, etc., all the big ticket items, in return for a small consideration.

It was with this eleemosynary mission in mind, that I returned to his house. I had decided it was time to acquire some breeding. I would purchase some solid, sensible-looking citizens who might be willing to fill in for the next 50 or 60 years (at the going rate, 25¢/dozen) as ornaments on the twisted branches of my family tree. When I proposed this scheme of redemption to the gray people in the photographs, all I received were frowns. They frowned even further when I promised them, if I died—WHEN I DIED—they would be set free.

Under other circumstances, these dour expressions of ancestral disapproval might have disappointed me. If I were Japanese, it might have led to suicide on the spot. However, as things turned out, it was Noon: the sun stood at the Zenith, in a clear, cerulean sky. Luck was with me. The wind was at my back.  I stole something else.

At the bottom of the last box of pictures, under the tissue paper so generously provided by the packaging department at—what is this place—Lobb's—I discovered a folded piece of parchment, which I at first mistook to be a souvenir of France—an ancient French Letter. It was not. It was an English letter. The dead man was British, after all. He looked like a walrus.

But this was a letter written by no walrus. It was a work of genius. It was three hundred years old, and it read as if it had been written yesterday. As if it had been intended for you. Or me.


[I have transcribed the epistle from the original, preserving, as best I can, the original spelling and idiosyncratic orthography intact:]


Beloved—

Clearly the terrible Titan, Chronos, hath interposed his savage SCYTHE between us! Never have two persons pined for Spiritual Emolument with more ARDOR (or more INIQUITY) and been so disappointed in their Desire for FULFILLMENT than the sorry pair of Faces the Fates set before us in our LOOKING Glasses today.

It is with great regret that I inform you that I did not die at the hands of the French on the BATTLEFIELD, in the Service of our SOVEREIGN, the good and gracious Queen Anne, on April 9th, 1709, inst. T’was the POX (the small one) which carried me off, Madam. I caught it pumping INFORMATION from a Ship's Carpenter in Cadiz.

Crueler even than Chronos, however, is the fact that Her Majesty’s Postmaster, a certain Mr. Jago, should be so whimsical in the EXECUTION of his DUTIES as not to be sensible of the boundaries of SPACE or TIME. Thus, in the VORTEX of EVENTS, as in a soiled Handkerchief, have our Destinies been CONFOUNDED. Thus, do you receive this epistle only now, on the Tercentenary of its Composition.

Do not a let a little thing like TIME come between us, Madam. I have seen MORTALS dissolve into Dirt who curtsied to the RULE of CLOCKS. And I have seen others cultivate a Transcendental PASSION—an AFFINITY of Souls—so far removed from the SHARPE curvature of Chronos’s SCYTHE that they passed, immortal, into the Heavens, unbound by quotidian rules of mental CHASTITY or casual CAUSALITY. Why should we be any different than these, my Dear, when our Hearts share the SAME buoyant Capacity to soar above the Zodiac, beyond the STARS themselves? This is no Time for TRIFLES.

[I am starting to stink, I am told by my companions, and turn pestilential, so I had best hurry up and FINISH writing, before I am DRAINED and EMBALMED.]

Please, rest assured, my dear, that, tonight, you may consult your congested Handkerchief without fear of REPRISAL. We shall eventually be meeting in a better place. As I gave my Ghost to Heaven, I sealed this MISSIVE with a Kiss.

The last Name to light on my lips was yours.

Adieu,

—N.

Post Script. Don’t forget to buy milk on your way home from the office. I think that by now Daisy must also be dead, too. I neglected to provide arrangements for her continuous care before I sailed for Spain. —Adieu.

...

I am not sure about the reader, but, upon reading it over again, while typing, I have come to the uncomfortable conclusion that this letter—indeed this entire blog post—may possibly be a forgery. And a pretty poor one at that. I have read other billet-doux, other blogs, I spend entire days reading blogs, and this is like nothing I have ever seen before.

What's more, when I turn off my computer, the author hovers there, grinning at me like a ghoul from the glossy black depths of my screen. And, what is worse, sometimes he also follows me into the toilet, for my morning ablutions, and before I can shut the door and sit down, he takes up residence in the mirror.

Have you no decency, Sir?

Lot and his Wife

As a former New Yorker, I have always felt a peculiar sympathy for the people of the twin cities, Sodom and Gomorrah. We have so much in common, after all: leash laws, skyscrapers, sewers, a selection of fine art galleries and restaurants, the world's best hospitals, universities, and tourists--in a word--everything that passes in intellectual circles as sophistication.

History, amateur astronomy, and sodomy are some of my favorite pastimes, and it is rather rare when any two of my hobbies overlap, let alone three. This is why, yesterday afternoon, I was fascinated to discover that astronomers, relying upon ancient Sumerian records from Ninevah (another dissolute metropolis) have actually managed to pin-point the very morning when somebody up there, certainly a rube, God, the force of Gravity, perhaps, Time, Dumb Luck, or in a moment of disappointed anger and disgust, Love, decided it was time to remind the citizens of Sodom of Gomorrah of their triviality. And their mortality.

And lo, on the 29th of June, in the year of 3123 B.C., at dawn, just as the curious gymnast from Iowa State had finished his 7th beer, and the predatory beasts had gathered round, each with a terrific boner, upon the horizon there appeared a disco-ball [Fox News says asteroid], and then, to the tune of Waterloo, the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from out of Heaven; and he overthrew those cities and all the valley, and all the inhabitants of the cities ... [Abraham] looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah and toward all the land of the valley, and beheld, and lo, the disco-ball was broken, and the smoke of the land went up like the smoke of a furnace...

I am paraphrasing from Genesis, of course. And I may be mixing things up with an amateur video installation project I was tangentially involved with in college, in the late 1980s, just before we really understood how the Heavens worked. Or retro-viruses.

...


Still, when the dust of our party days settles, all we are left with are salty pillars, fossilized sulfur, lonely people, lonely planets, confusion, a couple of frightened friends, and the dubious distinction of having seen enough human folly to enjoy the reputation of a survivor and a cynic among one's peers--and the lingering consolations of poetry.


Jumbled in the common box
Of their dark stupidity,
Orchid, swan, and Caesar lie;
Time that tires of everyone
Has corroded all the locks
Thrown away the key for fun.

In its cleft the torrent mocks
Prophets who in days gone by
Made a profit on each cry,
Persona grata now with none;
And a jackass language shocks
Poets who can only pun.

Silence settles on the clocks;
Nursing mothers point a sly
Index finger at a sky,
Crimson with the setting sun;
In the valley of the fox
Gleams the barrel of a gun.

Once we could have made the docks,
Now it is too late to fly;
Once too often you and I
Did what we should not have done;
Round the rampant rugged rocks
Rude and ragged rascals run.


-W.H. Auden

And another thing...

Well, after a whiff of mortality, some smelling salts, and the flutter of a sympathetic fan, I think I have started to recover from the universal excitement generated by my first posting. I hope that you have, too. My friend Bill had some very nice things to say about the magenta and rose color scheme I have employed here.

If I seem a little wistful this afternoon, I hope you will forgive me. I am trying to make up for lost time. You see, I have been trying to publish some of this stuff for years. And to suddenly realize what most people realized ten years ago—that you have the freedom to embarrass yourself in public without any help from others—is totally disorienting.

There is nothing so shattering to a person's personality—his sense of self— than a belated Epiphany. Everyone thinks himself a genius in his own little corner of the cosmos, and to discover otherwise is somewhat—er—unsettling. It is worse than showing up late for a party. It is more like showing up late to an orgy—when the beer is warm, the women are cold, and the only thing left to eat are cheese-doodles.

Which reminds me: I need to get some lunch...

While I am off eating, here is a poem involving the ghost of Harry Houdini—one of my childhood heroes. Harry, of course, did not believe in ghosts any more than you or I do, and he spent much of his later career debunking spiritualists, mentalists, and other frauds.

Therefore, I think the reader may take this item as a complete flight of fancy: the transcript of a conversation I once had with my soul through a Parker Brothers Planchette, or Ouija Board, when I couldn't find anyone willing to play Monopoly with me.

How strange the voices that we hear when we are alone!




The Escape Artist

Why don’t we take a tour of your ribcage?
Feel free to smoke. No spitting, though. It’s rude.
Now pick a person from the rack—an image
To titillate the senses. Something nude.

That’s your companion for Eternity.
A soul-mate, if you like. He never rots.
You’ve picked a postcard—excellent. Let’s see.
He looks like that Houdini—clad in locks

From head to toe. Will he escape in Time?
Reserve your seat for Harry’s greatest feat!
While we are waiting though, we ought to dine.
There must be something in the Snack Bar. Sweet:

I thought we had a box of Raisin Bran…
You do like Raisin Bran? You look distressed.
No, the box contains no Raisin Bran,
But please inhale whatever’s there with zest.

You’ll find it’s very hard to criticize
The brute who brings the breakfast—and his rose.
Tears have a tendency to fill his eyes
When you attack him. And he breaks your nose.

Which brings us back around to the front door:
They recently installed new mirrors—steel.
We had an “incident” on the top floor
When loneliness lost all its sex-appeal.

I’m not that nuts, I guess. I’m kind of glad
They took my glasses and bricked up the sky
Before these suicides became a fad.
I think it should be difficult to die.