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Results for category "2012"

24 Articles

Some Vignettes of the Cast

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                1.
An empty metal supermarket cart
on the sidewalk,
glistens wet under street lights,
this night, in the rain
Her confidence then, is meaningless
“Hey baby” “Don’t call me baby!
I ain’t no baby—I got a baby
of my own”
If grandma can do it, I can do it,
live to 83 on pure resentment, bile and vanity
May god save us all from the rank preachiness
of vile, pitiful, beaten old men
In that situation, you shouldn’t believe
what you see, but you will believe it...
Run, run, running— nothing gets to you, nothing
You’ll never catch me
                2.
There’s substitution for you
He accepts the privacy of her dreams
“Of course I know you (looking at her daughter)
you’re my sister...”
It used to be that booze alone
let her sleep, but death is there
Threats count more than opportunity,
that rare, unappreciated success
She has a sense of the good, mostly tribal
A strong-seated negligent disregard
for the horrors of life...
For his repeated, multiple failures
I can’t answer your question
I can only answer mine instead
“You know, you boys needn’t hang around
here anymore—I can die alone”
                3.
After awhile, you won’t hear it
It won’t go away, that resolute buzz
always there, but you won’t hear it
He thought he knew the boundary of her skills
Dazzled in his own brilliance,
what an ass…our flimsy memories
all of them true, these accounts are all true
The darkness won’t swallow him now
This isn’t a game of skill—
it’s a weirdly, ragged game of chance
In this luck-addled world
a tiny, slight prescience is brilliance
Cover all of the equipment, this factory’s dead
No one’s coming back here
The pledge of allegiance, the worship of the flag,
the cult of the war dead—he loved all that
                4.
It would be unwise to pet it—it’s vicious...
Her latest foray in dicey morals and bad style
She calls out for him, reaches for him and then...
she changes her mind
“His car was struck by a semi-trailer truck
after he lost control on a snow covered road near Elmira”
If only you could just by looking at a person
see them whole
It’s a kind of self-colonization—
you exploit yourself and all your friends
It’s like listening to a bunch of drunken salesmen
(we quietly exempt ourselves)
He told me he was just trying to do right,
to get it all right...
It’s all there—everything, dice, drugs, prostitution
all of it—you get caught in there, you might never get out

 

 

-February 26, 2012-

First the Mast Broke

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                1.
First the mast broke—
  driven 300 miles off course
Then the engine overheated
   and a makeshift mast blew away
in the dark
                2.
I can’t tell you anything
   about the course of the sun
or the depths of the moon
   the release of hidden springs
or the earth’s best illuminations
I can’t dispel the night
   or find your cold hands
Ask me to be silent
   I have lived through troubles and toil
Through sorrow I have aged too soon
No clothes, no robes, hide my changes—
  no girdle or wreath
A gentle breeze goes
  from orange, gold groves
marble figures gaze at me
A mule seeks passage through clouds
  The cliff rocks plunge beneath
and lemon blossoms glow
   He loves her for her color
as she fades into white leaves
Silver scissors like a beak
  that flies with the crows
My lover is a thief
  Her tears, whatever their bitterness,
were never so bitter as mine
                3.
Crystals of time—
  For all this suffering
you might as well be wise
  Some cats are friends,
some cats are killing machines
Much of what we see is random
  I’ve said it once
I won’t say it again
  We sat up half the night
swapping yarns
In the middle of a comedy—
  but you’re not very funny
The indifference of the universe
  to humans and other dumb animals—
ugly, unhappy, degenerate
He didn’t know or care
  if they listened
He knew no one much would listen
  She finds lots of lovers
but they don’t love her
No defense was needed...
  I’ll sleep on the train
The motion sways, lulls me
  This was her madness—
inappropriate pauses, unrelenting sadness

 

-February 12, 2012-

“Go ahead then—tell it…”

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                1.
“Go ahead then—tell it
If you think it’s so funny
It’s your story; you started to tell it—
so tell it”
Thrilled by pomp and power,
uninterested in any inner life
Enraged, moralistic, harsh and desperate
her excess wasn’t about their happiness
Custom, privilege, injustice
that single-minded suffering, resistance, redemption
Highly educated, earnestly well-meaning,
her high self-regard, stuck in these sad, antiseptic American prisons
Relentless indoor winter heat
They’re like parasites—dangerous too, like predators
Blind to her own blindness,
moralistic, overconfident, dismissive

 

                2.
There are always things to criticize
but there was nothing that so frightened or embarrassed her
Her denials would never stop in any case
It might be better that way, he thinks,
but it will no longer be as good
Conclusions drawn, proclamations made
Every statement somewhat wrong, somewhat premature
she flees to the safety of darkness, shadier storms
Dismayed by his appearance he always avoids mirrors
It makes her uncomfortable to see herself in him
He sat there drinking beer after beer in front of the children
That was restraint—he would have preferred vodka or gin
Hatred alone couldn’t sustain him
After the explosion the company determined
the kid’s life was worth a cool 150,000
So they sent the family a check
                3.
They dance in the streets of Paris and Berlin
rush to enlist before the whole thing’s over
Three months later—300,000 dead, 600,000 wounded
1914 and the war had four more years to run
He loses a bit of himself each time he goes down there
His intuition could easily fail him again
She’s not dead—the rumors were wrong
She didn’t kill herself—she’s alive and lives
in a small, closed-in suburb just outside of Dallas
“I do have problems with my eyes and if I fall
I generally break something”
Powerful people often enjoy taking risks
The politics were sharp, self-serving, Machiavellian,
petty and sometimes very stupid
He’s 68 and walks on shattered knees—he remembers the glory,
the victory then and that she wasn’t there to share it
                4.
Views desperately imperfect,
his knowledge always partial
He flatters, kicks, and kisses
to get what he wants
Too talented to do what ordinary people do,
we bust up those we dislike no matter what they do or say
We glorify the people like us—
like clench-fisted members of some small, feral gang
Conflict, anxiety, boredom, fear
envelop them in this fog
If only she could forget some of it—
if only in mitigation
They always felt superior, she knows, but she can barely believe
it happened—she couldn’t know what those people might do
Not that it mattered all that much to finally fail—
her last story ended with nothing to gain and everything left was for sale

-January 28, 2012-

The Few Traces

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                1.
Always enthralled by the original, the profound, the difficult,
she cared alone for what was true and right
She ignored the analysis until the blood got deep
The cost has been incurred and now it’s too late
She couldn’t relive the pleasure of that mistake
This inner debate, this scar
The causes of her hidden, deep anguish
If she felt it now she must feel it again
There was nothing to be gained by talking about it
It was neither salient nor shameful; only pain
Her inner world obscured by parasites who sound
like the idle, terrified chatter of old men 

The smarter you are the more likely you’ll lie
The less conscious lies are the most effective
You don’t know what time will be the last time;
but there’s always a last time

 

                2.
Her confidence grounded in ignorance;
it was by no means certain that she’d win
Her lies do best when rare and
poorly as they become more frequent
But what about the deeper view?
That huge bore, that fraud:
the more she treasures her honest ways,
the more frequently she lies
Her father was always best at those fun occasions:
a splendid host, bright and jolly as a boy
It’s always sad, awfully sad, to look back upon those days
When it comes to making attachments, she refrains
A simple, grotesque game played at the highest level:
It’s not the few traces of life in the corpse that scares
her and fills her regrets; she’s most scarred and damaged
by the shrill, mordant traces she missed in his life before death

-January 7, 2012-