The Mysterious Mr. N

To Mr. James Boswell, Esq.

Aberdeen

July 19th, 1776

Dear Sir,

Enclosed you will find the late Mr. N. I urge you to set aside your personal Distaste for the Man and read his Book.

I know that from Age to Age, from Page to Page (indeed, from Line to Line, Word to Word, even Letter to Letter), things change radically in his Universe: Prose bleeds into Poetry, Poetry into Prose, and, suddenly, the most sober and reflective Soliloquy may dissolve into a fit of hard-to-conceal Flatulence, the Curse of uncontrolled Mirth.

I understand your Disgust. In part, Sir, I even share it. He is not what I expected. With Mr. N, one begins to feel—very quickly—that those very same Laws of Reason which have governed our Lives since the Birth of Newton have been reshuffled and re-dealt to an Ever Hopeful Humanity from a pack of Playing Cards consisting entirely of identickal practickal Jokers.

One never quite knows what to expect with Mr. N. One might just as easily wander off a Cliff as trip over a Ruby when strolling through Chelsea. Indeed, more than once, I have been caught in Bed with him—quite Red-Handed—by my Landlady, Mrs. Prynne. Can you imagine me following Him—Jowl to Cheek, Face to Fundament—crawling toward a subterranean Lake at the End of a hot Lava Tube in Java?

And yet, Sir, there we were. And there was Mrs. Prynne. And there were Mrs. Prynne’s scandalized Eyebrows scampering backwards like a pair of frightened Spiders across her Scotch Bonnet and out of the Door! 

What else could I do, Sir, but lower my Gaze, lift my Octavo Fig Leaf, and blush? 

I have lost track of the Years I have idled away in Mr. N’s imaginative Company:  beside a small Lantern, wiggling my Toes in the cool Waters of his cavernous Immensity; regarding with wonder the Darkness above and waiting for a Stalactite to fall and crash through my gaping Mouth. All the while, he stands fishing in the Shadows: a bored Cork bobbing above a School of blind Guppies, his Hook baited with Nothing but a naked Barb.

Plato was wrong about the Shadows. Light a candle and look around you, Sir. Now, look inside. Deeper, Sir, deeper. Does not the interior World we occupy more closely resemble Mr. N’s volcanic Lagoon than She does the dusty Caves of Platonic Philosophy? The Shadows our Lanterns cast upon the sulph’rous Walls of our Crania bear no relation to any idealized Form; but even here, the thorniest Rose one may encounter is no less fragrant despite its vicious Stem.

So it is with Life, Sir. And with Art. In the scarlet Petals of a Rose, all of our Hopes and Fears finally flower. According to Mr. N, these Eruptions are simply the ordinary Properties of Existence, the sort of things Mr. Garrick’s theatrickal Troupe trafficks in: Sheets of Steel Thunder, mangled Shakespeare, a quiet Cassandra with itchy Privates.

At least from Her, if not from Him, we may infer an Intelligent Design to the Cosmos, even a benevolent Heaven; or, failing that, Damnation and Eternal Hell-Fire—the Clap.

I suspect that the Truth of the Matter lies buried in the Act of Creation: somewhere between a burning Desire and a painful Discharge.

Alas.

Alas, Sir, alas. I should have done. Mrs. Prynne has arrived to badger me with Milk and Tea. 

“Patience, Madam. Madam, please. Madam, will you desist? Sit ye down with your Milk and your Tea! Have you no Eyes? Can you not see? I am busy in Bed; and, but for my Nightcap, completely undres’t! Please, Woman, allow me to add one further Paragraph to the Body of this Letter before I rise. I cannot leave my dearest Friend with one of those nettlesome Hangnails which AUTHORS do so often AFFECT: Afterwords, Epilogues, Epitaphs, and the forever-to-be-dreaded Post Script. I shall leave NOTHING unsaid.”

To speak plainly, James, in brief, with a furious Widow at my Elbow as Witness: after the Death of my dear Wife, without my Midnight Rambles with Mr. N—and the Milk, and the Tea, the relentless Ministrations of Mrs. Prynne each Morning—I am sure that I should have committed Suicide.

I hope you will consider this Book, as I now consider my Life, a Gift.

Your most Obed’t, Humble, Serv’t,

Sam Johnson

Speedos and Space Suits

NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW: I am here talking with author Eric Norris about his new book of short stories, poems and essays, Cock Sucking (On Mars). Eric, about that title. Cock sucking I can understand. But why choose Mars for sucking cock when you live so close to Manhattan?

ERIC: I have already sucked off everyone worth sucking off in Manhattan, I guess. And the G-Train is terrible, especially on weekends. It is easier to get to Mars than Brooklyn from where I live. In Queens. It’s time to move to another planet. Besides, I have a thing for guys in uniform—lifeguards and astronauts, mostly. I was going to call the book Speedos and Space Suits.

NYTBR: Is that all you do, think about swimming and space sex?

ERIC: No, not really. But, I must admit, I do enjoy that unbearable lightness of being. Just floating. I do have a great deal of fun with the idea of other people thinking about sex, though. The book is really an inquiry into how we do that: how we establish our identities in the minds of others. I start with a poetic device, a supposed poltergeist, the ghost of my childhood, and I move gradually forward in time, from various perspectives, until I pass my death. I use the mouth of the poet as a metaphor.

NYTBR: Like Auden says, “Poetry survives…a way of happening, a mouth.”

ERIC: Exactly. Most of the cock sucking actually occurs behind the scenes in the book, in the reader’s imagination—the only organ of pleasure an author really has access to.

NYTBR: [Tapping his forehead, remembering something.] Wordsworth. Didn’t he say something about the connection between pleasure and poetry in his ‘Preface to the Lyrical Ballads?’ What was that line…

ERIC: I think it was more than a single line, if I know Wordsworth.

NYTBR: Let me Google it. [Tapping furiously at his iPad.] Here it is:


“Nor let this necessity of producing immediate pleasure be considered as a degradation of the Poet's art. It is far otherwise. It is an acknowledgment of the beauty of the universe, an acknowledgment the more sincere because it is not formal, but indirect; it is a task light and easy to him who looks at the world in the spirit of love: further, it is a homage paid to the native and naked dignity of man.”

--William Wordsworth, Preface to the Lyrical Ballads, 1802


ERIC: See, cock sucking. Sensitivity. A love for Man. For Art. Wordsworth is not my favorite poet, but he was certainly a major cocksucker, in my opinion. Many gay scholars believe that Dorothy, Mrs. Wordsworth, was really a guy in a gingham dress—probably Coleridge, his collaborator.

NYTBR: [Incredulous] Really?

ERIC: No. That was just a joke told by Lord Byron in one of the lost cantos of Don Juan. Still, it is kind of touching to think of Wordsworth and Coleridge holding hands.

NYTBR: You old Romantic. What you are saying is kind of disgusting, if you asked me. Wordsworth and Coleridge. [Makes a sour cherry face.] I would much rather see Keats and Shelley going at it.

ERIC: [Patiently, as if addressing a child.] Poetic tastes might have changed since Wordsworth’s day, but cock sucking hasn’t. We just use different labels to describe our lollipops in the twenty-first century. I use the concept of cock sucking for the sake of convenience, as a kind of lyrical shorthand, because I am gay. People would be very put out if I didn’t do something queer in public: blow kisses, blow jocks, dress up, go down, dance, toss beads, or something. To cut through all of the bullshit, I was thinking of calling my book Butt Fucking (On Mars). But I felt that critics would not take the analogy—pardon the pun—seriously. Cock Sucking (On Mars) is very hard work. Mars is a cold and arid world awaiting transformation. Mars is the future. Mars is poetry.

NYTBR: What is butt fucking then?

ERIC: Butt fucking is earthier. It is different. Anal sex is more like prose. All you need to do is throw on a cowboy hat and yell, “YEEEHAW!” like Slim Pickens at the end of Dr. Strangelove. I like a little of both. Prose and poetry. Poetry and prose. Back and forth. Earth and Mars. Interplanetary commerce. Yaweh and “YEEEHAW!”

NYTBR: And comedy. And tragedy. The story of your home. The tale of Takaaki. In many ways, this is also a very sad book.

ERIC: Sad? It isn’t sad. Life isn’t sad. Life is beautiful: whatever form it takes, wherever we find it.

NYTBR: Maybe sad is the wrong word. Poignant. We see so many horizons here. And so many cages.

ERIC: Maybe I should have named the book Speedos and Space Suits, after all. Remember, every horizon is a kind of cage. Even the infinite depths of outer space. We can go nowhere unless we carry a little air with us. On our backs, or in our lungs. As poets, I think that we need to feel more comfortable living with vast horizons. And coping with cages. They are the same thing, really. We need to be able to live in both environments. In a sense, we need them both to survive.

NYTBR: How do you see yourself? In a Space Suit or a Speedo?

ERIC: [Laughing.] Do I really have to choose? Well, I am 44. To be honest, I think that I look better in a Space Suit these days. Still, it is hard to isolate one aspect of myself from any other, everything is connected: what I was once, what I am now. I am different things to different people at different times. Even to myself. When I look in the mirror, all that I see is a jumble of genetic material calling itself “Eric Norris.”

NYTBR: Sort of like me.

ERIC: Not exactly. You are a poetic device. My poltergeist. You are my Ariel. You are free to be anything you wish. You will never live. You will never die. You walk in eternity. Not like me.

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.

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.

August 11, 2009 Aetat. 40

Readers of this blog will encounter ghoulish, grinning gaps: gaps in writing, gaps in knowledge, gaps in artistry, gaps in grammer [sic], gaps in Time. At wheniwasoneandtwenty.blogspot.com, the care and well-being--dare I say enjoyment?--of the Reader remains our top priority today just as it has been since Day 1 [A.U.C.]. Despite the gaps.


The trouble is, I get distracted. I wander off into ravines. Into reveries. Sometimes I secretly go fishing for ideas in calm, cool underground lagoons. I will roll up my khakis, dip my feet in the crystalline water, wiggling my toes, listening to the low hiss of my Coleman lantern. This is what I do for inspiriation, not for fish. For fish, I go to the Grand Central Market, where they have discount salmon on Wednesday. Yea, though the brain of a poet is a convoluted place, we are not all madmen. Or admen. By and large, I think, we are simply sadmen, obsessed with arranging ripples.

You know, he says, surveying his icy, air-conditioned cavern, Plato was wrong about the shadows cast upon cave walls: the luminous ideas behind the shadows we see are not idealized forms, but simply stand-ins for other things, bright things Plato had trouble defining in proper, philosophical Greek. Fortunately, we are working in English and we enjoy a much larger, more scientific vocabulary than Plato. We call these glowy things: torches. Candles. Lanterns. Flashlights. Halogen lamps. Photon emitters. Stars. In a fit of poetic whimsy, we might label them Makers of Light. We distinguish these sources of light from words because words belong to a different class of objects. Words are ripples of thought written in the air. And one does not lightly assume responsiblity for the air--for an entire language--especially one as universally susceptible to misunderstanding as plain English. So, let me be pefectly clear here, unlike a politician.

If I were writing in Mandarin, say, no one would care what I said, outside of China, and perhaps a few concerned college professors. And even then, if anyone did notice me, or one of my poems, or blogposts, my slip-ups, elisions, or allusions, you would probably never hear about it. Our journalists certainly wouldn't report it. Most were educated in the arts of ignorance and deception by those same concerned college professors I noted above. I would simply be whisked away silently, at midnight, like one of those poor people from Falun Gong, thinkers of unsanctioned thoughts. I would wind up in some Hell of a State Hospital having my liver rudely extracted by a bureaucrat for the benefit of some dipsomaniacal lighting designer shopping for organs on eBay in Cologne.

But everybody cares about what you say in English these days, so one must be extra careful not to hurt anybody's feelings. I know of people who have built impressive careers on nothing more than feelings, mouthing carefully constructed--largely meaningless, but infinitely malleable--phrases. And nothing else. Thus, the Obama phenomenon.

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar.

Perhaps this is why I have been quietly re-reading James Boswell's book The Life of Johnson. Samuel Johnson was a subversive in the truest sense: a man of reason, an Englishman, not a politician. He was most famous as a lexicographer, but he was also a poet of great skill. He defined the limits of words in both careers. He even tinkered a bit in philosophy. He famously kicked a stone to refute the idea that everything in the universe is merely a mental construction:

"After we came out of the church, we [Johnson and Boswell] stood talking for some time together of Bishop Berkeley's ingenious sophistry to prove the nonexistence of matter, and that every thing in the universe is merely ideal. I observed, that though we are satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to refute it. I never shall forget the alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it -- "I refute it thus.""

Dr. Johnson defended his definitions. He was a scholar. He was also pompous, yes, as many scholars are. He was untidy, certainly. And besides his aggressive intelligence, he also had a corpulent wife who was twice his age. The widow of a mercer. And he loved her very deeply. In his defense, I think this must count for something.

One of his best friends was a shady versificator named Savage. Together the young Dr. Johnson & Mr. Savage would wander the backstreets of London. I suppose, if London had cool caves instead of cathouses to investigate, they might have visited a few of those, too. Just to see if the fish were jumping. And how high. Sort of like I do on some summer nights...

Here is an excerpt from Dr. Johnson's Life.

"In estimating the progress of his mind during these two years, as well as in future periods of his life, we must not regard his own hasty confession of idleness; for we see, when he explains himself, that he was acquiring various stores; and, indeed he himself concluded the account, with saying, "I would not have you think I was doing nothing then." He might, perhaps, have studied more assiduously; but it may be doubted, whether such a mind as his was not more enriched by roaming at large in the fields of literature, than if it had been confined to any single spot. The analogy between body and mind is very general, and the parallel will hold as to their food, as well as any other particular. The flesh of animals who feed excursively, is allowed to have a higher flavour than that of those who are cooped up. May there not be the same difference between men who read as their taste prompts, and men who are confined in cells and colleges to stated tasks?"

Day 18 - The Kobayashi Maru - continued

I was unsatisfied with how I left the Kobayashi Maru yesterday, sort of stranded, rapidly losing air in your imagination, with you wondering where the Hell I was going with it. So I have added another stanza today, which will hopefully begin to point toward our destination.

I do have a very particular end in mind here. I hope you will stick with me for the next couple of days as the difficult part of our story unfolds.

Again, I have included a complete version of the poem with today's addition appended to 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—
Blood being 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’—let’s see who reacts—
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! Squishy inserts in 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. This 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,
Directly to the gutter—not the drain.
It sits on the grate, 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 that 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—
Beige bedroom 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 thank
The Lord, this morning, when I dressed, I took
A nice new necktie from my closet.) Look—

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 rises from 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.
I was shocked to see Takaaki 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.”
Somebody always wore this 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?
(You’ll see.) From a Doraemon candy tin,
Takaaki took a cigarette. A thin
Wisp of smoke and hiss rose from his plate,
Typical for the 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 a beetle 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 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.”
“No. 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 fragile freighter out of Altair Six—
The bane of all Starfleet cadets, but one—
Who counts impossible rescues 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’m taking charge of that scenario.
The life I live is not a game. Oh, no.

The Kobayashi Maru is a test
Of character you’re not allowed to win.
It’s fixed. There is nobody in distress,
Hull breached, black, icy vaccum pouring in;
The ship’s a simulation, lie, a ruse,
Like love, a logic problem: you must choose
A method and a manner for your death—
What works for you? Expending your sweet breath,
Hovering around the Neutral Zone,
Listening to people suffocate, or
Will you, perhaps, ignite galactic war,
Attempting their salvation? You’re alone.
You are the person in the Captain’s chair.
I have a Scrabble board I must prepare.

The Bacon Effect

Gosh, is it nice today! Somebody has planted blue hyacinths in the huge thick, gray anti-terror pots outside the Chrylser Building, on 43rd Street. The lovely smell of those flowers returned me to Boston last week, where a soft breeze (Iam ver egelidos refert tepores, as Catullus would say) brought me the first whiff of Spring this season while visiting Sally. [Hi, Sally!]

I am not sure if you have ever done it before, since everybody does it differently, but if you should ever find yourself in possession of a few warm evenings to fritter away in fun, I would like to recommend this book.

The perfect place to read it, of course, is Boston, in the evening, around seven, sitting on a cool and comfortable concrete pilaster on the banks of the River Charles, in between paragraphs, perhaps, puffing a cigarette, watching the smoke drift off—like the billowy white sails on the little white boats from the Community Boathouse scudding across the copper-plated water. I did this about 15 years ago, in the waning days of the 20th Century, when History was on the verge of being abolished.

Even though History continued—in some quite shocking, though entirely foreseeable ways—I did give up smoking, I am pleased to say, and eventually took up running. And for that, I thank History. I am also happy to note that Boston has continued being beautiful in the spring—much more beautiful than New York. So, if you are in New England today, and if you have the time, if the temperature is above 60 degrees, and if the breeze is right, and the angle of the sun is correct, at sundown, you may be able to reconstruct some of what I call “The Bacon Effect” even now. Think of it as a thought experiment.

A lot of ifs there, I know. The cumulative effect of all of these contingencies may seem a bit daunting at first glance. As dicey as it seems, do not let yourself be deterred from a dip into the subjunctive mood. Reading a bit of Francis is at least worth a try. Recipes involving Bacon usually are.

…

Lord only knows why I was drawn to read Francis Bacon then. I think I was on an essay reading jag that summer: Montaigne, Bacon, Addison, Steele, Voltaire, Hazlitt, E.B. White, Virginia Woolf, E.M. Forster, William F. Buckley, and others. I go through these odd little literary phases.

One particular phrase from Bacon’s essay 'Of Studies' has never been very far away from my conscious mind since the warm and wonderful day when I first read it:

Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention. Some books also may be read by deputy, and extracts made of them by others; but that would be only in the less important arguments, and the meaner sort of books, else distilled books are like common distilled waters, flashy things. Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.

“Weigh and consider.” That phrase took on a new and more painful meaning for this writer a few years ago when he was laid off and found himself carting large portions of his library off to The Strand bookstore to be sold to pay for food and rent. I think I might have earned $2000.00 from the sale of those books that summer. I have no idea what I paid for them originally. But it frightens me to think about it.

To what end does this wretched anecdote lead? Probably nowhere, if you write fiction. Still, it said something to me in very practical terms—something I had always suspected about poetry, but had never fully internalized, as a poet, until I actually started looking at the worth of words in terms of how effectively they feed you—which, at the end of the empirical day, more than their truth or their intrinsic beauty, may be all that really matters about the words we use.


Used Books
(Weighed and considered)


I run my index finger down each spine
Along the wall, selecting books to sell:
Collected Tales and Sketches of Mark Twain,
Pierre and the Piazza Tales, Melville;

A fine translation of Montaigne’s Essays,
The Plays of William Shakespeare, bound in green.
A dozen pages flutter from Rabelais’
Gargantua. My God, he’s gotten lean.

I slip the poor thing back among the rest.
To the Lighthouse, Giovanni’s Room—
I take. I tie them up with Tacitus
And Mr. Gibbon’s history of Rome.

All that remains is dust. And poetry:
Nobody seems to buy that shit, but me.

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?

A Discourse on Method, not Madness

I am training for a marathon. Last night, after a nine mile run, as I was reclining in the steamroom, cleansing my senses, inhaling that soothing Sibylline mixture of mold spores and eucalyptus aerosols my gym specializes in, I was approached by a naked philosopher, in florescent yellow flip-flops, curious about how I developed my tight narrative technique. An answer will be forthcoming.

Before it arrives, however, I hope it will be noted, italicized, bolded in blood and underlined in black, that I normally reject the random requests I receive my fans at the gymnasium.  I take no risks. I am the scrupulous steward of an uncommonly high standard of appearance in all matters of public virtue. Like Julius Caesar, I am a Republican. I try to take my responsibilities to you, dear reader, and to my Art, very seriously. True as that may be, it must also be confessed, unfortunately, with respect to the temptations of talk, that all men are of mortal—if not mathematically equal—temper. Especially poets.

No matter how fortified we may consider ourselves to be against the seductions of discourse, no one is entirely proof against them. We must remember, when the mind is flooded with endorphins, or flushed with an excess of wine, or desire, even the Saintly—such as myself—may succumb and say, "Hello." We are all sinners. We need look no further than the philosopher Plato for verification of this sad fact. Confronted by a young Athenian engorged with curiosity, we may see the elderly thinker, Socrates, our prim Patron of Propriety, reduced to a babbling brook of imbecilities. And we may weep for him.

Yes, we certainly may weep. Indeed, we do weep—we all weep—we shed whole Pacifics some nights—but not for very long. Who has time for tears these days? Our grief is not Greek, after all. We will get over it. That is why we invented Band-Aids decorated with bunnies.

We are a goofy and giddy race.

…

I believe it should be abundantly clear from the brevity of the preceding paragraph that I bend over to no man in the pursuit of Truth. Or Wit. In case it isn't, let me reiterate: I will have no truck with false prophets, no matter how sexy in size or spiritual endowment. 

For the religous reader, of course, I may make exceptions. I am not without a heart, when it comes to emotions, you know, or a head. I am a friend to animals everywhere, of every stripe. Some of them are tigers. Some are zebras. Some are slugs. Some of them are my best friends—so you had better watch it. E-mail me a photo and your exact measurements and I will see if I have a cage for you in my mental menagerie.

…

[To continue.] Candor forces to me confess that, after nine miles of treadmilling, the very last thing on planet Earth I wish to do is trifle with a curious Twink. I greeted the inquisitive eye of this naked question mark [?] with a sigh and a circumambient survey of the Cosmos, which seemed to take in everything in the Universe except for him, his nihilistic nether regions, and those ridiculous florescent flip-flops. 

As a refuge from the temptation to talk, I assume, when it finally came to rest, my gaze alighted on a piece of plumbing ideal for meditation and pregnant with poetic potential: the leaky shower head suspended from the ceiling in the corner.

Undeterred by my chilly dismissal of his existence, out of the corner of my eye, I descried our persistent you friend remove his towel from his waist, and begin folding the sodden article into a two-layered square.  He sat down in a puddle next to me on the bench below—another student expecting a Symposium on literature, I imagined, and preparing to take notes. The hideous atmosphere of dramatic tension engendered by this action—the simple act of sitting down—made me feel very English (in the Masterpiece Theater sense), very Thackeray, very lost. Very nervous. Very old.

Drip, drip, drip, went the leak.

We sat there, one bench removed from each other, a short space, the distance fact differs from fiction for what seemed like an Eternity. I twiddled my thumbs—I was all thumbs—silently sweating. I was not in the mood. I studied the patterns of steam rushing from the vent, the tiles, the bottle of eucalyptus spray, the door. A grey glob of abandoned newsprint on the floor uttered the ominous syllable: “Ob—.” The haze grew denser. Hell grew hotter. I had come in here to relax. I found myself breathing heavily—harder than I had panted when I began running mile nine.  The air thickened. I was becoming deranged. The drip, drip, drip of the shower head echoed in my head, grew louder, dislocating the very senses I had repaired privately to this room to stick back into their proper sockets.

Why was my heart racing? Was I dehydrated, I wondered? I can’t see anything anymore, only shadows, I thought. What does he want? Perhaps I was wrong.  He seemed kind of friendly for a psychopath: he kept smiling.  I suppose most of them do. I panicked. Although there was light, the fog in this dank little room made me feel more claustrophobic than that spooky cave in India I visited with Dr. Aziz and Mr. Forster.

Drip.

My Life was already circling the drain, when—


TO BE CONTINUED.