Snowsuit

[The person speaking here, of course, is Lucifer.]


As much as I deplore soliloquies,
Speeches, and comic monologues—they turn
My stomach—I must still deliver these

To raise dejected spirits. “Let’s return
To your big bedroom. Heaven, then. Some past
Prison you can imagine. If you yearn

To smash Authority, smash it. Break the glass.
Inhale the mustard gas. Give me the cries
Of children running helter-skelter as

I calmly napalm you. Surprise! Surprise!
Who did you think that you were playing with?
A girl? A weepy sissy? Come on, guys.

I am not Jesus. Christ, the only myth-
Ic man you’re likely to encounter in
This life is Love. And would you like a list

Of his offenses, His war crimes? Then
Stand by for a fight. There is no horror,
No atrocity, God would not commit to win.”

I say this to a green casualty of war
Pulled from a heap of clingy clothes—no vests—
All arms—a corpse I drag across the floor

More irreverently than one expects
A kid to treat the dead: with a smile, a skip,
A shaking rump, the exclamation, “Yes!”

It seems my snowsuit doesn’t mind a bit.
He joins the general festivities—
Snowball season! Canceled school! I unzip

His bowels. I slide through his extremities.
I search for mittens—and he giggles like
I’m tickling him. Almost until he pees.

Event Horizon

The long piece I mentioned in my last blog post seems to be taking a sort of shape. Instead of long columns of continuous terza rima, I seem to be settling into 30 line snapshots of the story as it develops. Maybe, later on, I will add some connective tissue to these bare bones, but I will have to see how things develop. In the meantime, my little skeleton will have to shamble along as best he can.

As things stand now, I have composed two poems. The first lays out something of the structure of the entire piece. I call it The Argument. It is modeled after Milton's summaries of what to expect in each book of Paradise Lost. It is narrated from an impersonal point of view.

The second poem, Pandemonium, continues the story from my own perspective, as an adult and as a boy, looking inward at a picture of my home from the perspective of a man and outward, at the family lawn, from the perspective of a child. Where I am looking out at the world as a child, I am seeing the landscape through a large cherry lozenge I once stuck to my window, to alert firemen (should the house catch fire) that a child might be in that room. Part of some civic safety campaign, distributed by the local Fire Department to elementary schools, I expect.

I am not sure what the title of the entire book will be. Something should occur to me before I am finished.

Receive thy new Possessor: One who brings
A mind not to be chang'd by Place or Time.
The mind is its own place, and in it self
Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n.

Paradise Lost, Book 1, 252-255


The Argument


Fix the architecture in your mind.
A house divided by a common wall.
A duplex structure. Old. Solid. No sign

Of instability. The only fall
On our horizon is a flake of snow—
The vanguard of a Heavenly host still

Hovering high in the clouds—an angel slow-
Ly fluttering his wings as he descends
Upon the asphalt shingles down below,

Landing gently. There. Lucifer sends
A shiver through the house. No plaster cracks,
Perhaps, no timbers bend. Let’s not pretend.

But something registers. A thermostat
Ticks over. Misty windows smile—serene,
Secure. Smug. An icy talon taps

Against these giant cataracts—seeing
How impregnable storm glass really is.
“You must be joking, folks.” The tv screen

Replies, “I love Lucy.” Laughter splits
Both sides. The Devil leaps into a pot,
Skating across black ice, catching his

Nails on a geranium too stiff to rot,
Or run, do anything except berate
The universe with palsied petals. Not

A sympathetic sky. Dispassionate.
Slate. Midnight. But softer than the bright
Steel breeze leaving the immaculate

Lawn gouged with long shadows. And that light,
That speck of white, almost invisible.
The little demon to arrive tonight.



Pandemonium


The one photo of the place I possess
I stole from Google maps. A blurry shot.
Despite new paint and siding, this address

Sucks all I am into a tiny dot—
All light, all matter—as gravity warps
Stars into singularities. I ought

To find myself in there, behind closed doors,
Drinking a jar of pickle juice. Nope.
I could be out walking the dog, of course,

Peaches, pausing while she poops. I hope
That I’m not falling down the cellar stairs,
Killing Kyle, or cutting my own throat

In one of those ridiculous nightmares
I never have. I never dream. Really,
I never sleep. I’m too busy upstairs.

I will be busy for eternity,
Peeling the wax paper backing from
A red decal—a circle—carefully

Applying it to my window. How come?
To tempt the firemen. It screams, “A boy
Might still be up there—burning in his room!”

That’s me. Young Lucifer. When I deploy
That red transparency inside my head,
Flames engulf the world. “You must enjoy

Destroying things.” That’s what my father said,
Receiving a wrecked radio. I dis-
Agree. I can make fists. I make my bed.

I manufacture ice. And look at this
Crayon monstrosity: a pink igloo.
A home. I can build homes where none exist.

Pandemonium

I have started writing a new longer poem, tentatively entitled Pandemonium--Pandaemonium being the capital of Hell in John Milton's Paradise Lost. Every man's home is his castle, the English proverb says. The castle, in this case, is based on the duplex carriage house I grew up in at 139 Bryant Street in North Tonawanda, New York. (For all you Google maps fanatics.)

Essentially, the story I plan to tell decribes the events of a single winter day and night in 1977, when I was 9: when my little world unaccountably fell apart, physically, spiritually and metaphorically. It centers around the evil question which arose from that calamity.

"How do I put it back together again?"


Pandemonium


Receive thy new Possessor: One who brings
A mind not to be chang'd by Place or Time.
The mind is its own place, and in it self
Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n.

Paradise Lost, Book 1, 252-255



Fix the architecture in your mind.
A house divided by a common wall.
A duplex structure. Old. Solid. No sign

Of instability. The only fall
On our horizon is a flake of snow—
The vanguard of a Heavenly host still

Hovering high in the clouds—an angel slow-
Ly fluttering his wings as he descends
Upon the asphalt shingles down below,

Landing gently. There. Lucifer sends
A shiver through the house. No plaster cracks,
Perhaps, no timbers bend. Let’s not pretend.

But something registers. A thermostat
Ticks on. Two misty windows smile—serene,
Secure. Smug. An icy talon taps

Against these giant cataracts—seeing
How impregnable storm glass really is.
“You must be joking, folks.” The tv screen

Replies, “I love Lucy.” Laughter splits
All sides. The Devil leaps into a pot,
Tumbling across black ice, catching his

Nails on a geranium too stiff to rot,
Or run, do anything except berate
The sky with palsied little petals. Not

A sympathetic sky. Dispassionate.
Cold slate. Midnight. But softer than the bright
Steel breeze leaving the immaculate

Lawn gouged with ugly shadows. And that light,
That speck of white, almost invisible.
The first of billions to arrive tonight.

The Poet

The language he employed was plain,
As undistinguished as his face;
He mumbled in a monotone,
And, now and then, forgot his place.

Largely, he talked about himself,
As people do. I understand
His views on life extended from
A callus on his writing hand.

The critics charged, “These poems lack
That passionate intensity
Great art requires. Your words evoke
No worlds, they shed no light...” You see

His vision was quite limited.
He evidently had bad eyes
Like Milton and like Homer did—
Blind men who never missed a sunrise.

So far, so goo..

The only wrinkle is that I haven’t posted anything new in 5 days, which is appalling behavior for a blogger, especially one with a following of hungry readers that numbers in the billions. I hope to make up for this lapse in the very near future, not only with an especially witty post, but perhaps with a selection of tasteful nudes.

Before we get to any skin, however, please let me pause to thank Carol and Eileen for a lovely New Year’s Eve 2007 and to recommend a wonderful brand of hot sauce I experimented with this weekend: Scorned Woman. Excellent on your eggs and delirious in Bloody Marys. Never will your eyes water with more pleasure...

At least not in public.

…

Epithalamion
For M.Z.C.

I'm glad you bang me like a door
When I stick pins in your behind;
Your lap is my electric chair,
But, onion of my eye, be kind:

My jawbones click like castanets,
The moon fandangoes in your face,
Our knuckles crack in common time,
"The organist has lost his place!"

O, Cupid you're the devil's priest!
Behind that laughing mask of gold
You rummage in my heart for plums
Then gobble up my living soul!

Still, Hell is just a state of mind,
As the lovely Lucifer observed.
Although my things are singed a bit,
I've come from Heaven. It's absurd:

I need you more than cyanide,
You put the strychnine back in tea:
I'd rather run around with you
Creating total Anarchy!