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.