The Camel

For Gavin


The love is in the writing, yes. It is
This pencil—architect of all my hopes.
I suck on my eraser, like a nipple.
The friction of the lead provides some heat.
The little squiggles which adorn my man-
Uscript, swim wonderfully between the
Lines, like freshly ejected sperm,
Seeking, out of instinct, a nice, warm
Place they can kick off their flippers,
Crack a Michelob, exhausted, and unwind.
A mouth, a hand, some other place. Who knows?

Your last poem mentioned your career,
Retiring from porn, continuing to appear
Naked, reading poetry in California.
I was in college then, learning from my dad
Sucking cock was probably something
A boy in Buffalo ought not to do.
Soon after he discovered my diary,
I found myself searching for a butt one
Night along the shoulder of a road
So dark it seemed to lead into a future
Paved entirely in blackness, coal.

A scattering of stars, a slice of Moon,
The prick of a pink planet, Mars, I think,
Took pity on me, like the passing cars.
Those headlights allowed me to pick out
A discarded pack of Camels which
Concealed one cigarette and puff of air.
How incredible that find: how Moon
And Mars, Camel and cars, kept
Me company that night. But the sparks
Of a tossed Marlboro let me smoke
Where I was going—a dim, orange glow.

I thanked the driver as he sped away,
Truck dwindling to a pair of rubies. I
Had no matches in my pocket—no-
Thing useful, no money, no house keys:
A Latin book in my backpack, Ovid’s
Metamorphoses, toothbrush, clothes,
Socks and soiled underwear. And still
How lucky I felt—and not too cold—
Now that I could smoke. The poetry
We’d write together was so far away—
Farther than Mars, that truck driver, you

Standing naked in L.A. And love,
While that Camel lasted, didn’t seem
A possibility all that remote.

Pieridum Vates

One couplet I shall always remember from my desultory days of studying Latin is this, a comment directed from an exasperated Ovid to Cupid, from Amores, book I:

'Quis tibi, saeve puer, dedit hoc in carmina iuris?
Pieridum vates, non tua turba sumus..."

Which may be (very) loosely translated thus:

'Cruel boy, who put you in charge of poetry?
We are the Muses's men, not in your crowd...'

The reason I recall it now. A variation on Ovid's 'Pieridum', (a crystalline spring flowing through a mild valley in Macedonia once regarded by the Greeks as sacred to the Muse) was mentioned in the poem I was reading this morning on the display screen of my cellphone, between Stamford Station and Mamaroneck: Pope Alexander's Essay on Criticism:

A little Learning is a dang'rous Thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian Spring:
There shallow Draughts intoxicate the Brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again..

I guess I have a hangover from the injustice I did to Homer in the piece I published last week, where I pretend to be Ulysses, and I invite you, dear reader, to participate in the whole feckless farce as my partner in crime, my faithful Penelope.

In an effort to placate Apollo, and the other angry, ambient powers of Creation who may be lurking in the shadows, interrupting my sleep, I would like add something to my blog a bit more circumspect in scope, a little less ambitious in effort.

Please accept my apologies Parnassus.

The Poet

The language that he used was plain,
As undistinguished as his face,
He mumbled in a monotone,
And, now and then, he lost 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, “This garbage lacks
All pretense of Poetry—
Insisting words evoke no worlds,
They shed no light...” One could see

His powers were quite limited.
He evidently had bad eyes:
The sad result of too much sex
On sandy beaches at sunrise.