1269 Arts and sciences poems

If the ashes of Mark Twain lie in the Mississippi River then I’m sure he does rise up some days emerge from dark polluted depths to walk over water to land and scans the horizon for change being a curious sort, he sees the crisis rise again another war on the horizon and shakes his craggy head to say no not again he hopes truth-sayers still exist who don’t have to wait until their dead. December 2002

to be gone a constant desire embarrassed for the giant leaning in for love we had enough of the dance number but                   the whirling begins it just starts silos full of air no more corn no more wheat watching myself for full details in a strange man’s pants we let the soldier board the plane shot in head three days later why are you angry you said why are you not I said

to worship tininess of a martyr observe shrinking church in rearview mirror the black deer it turns out was beige a tan doe covered in flies flesh of shame is nearly the shame of flesh pressing an unstable clock to cactus with one, two, three counts of recalibration fuck you who ask for forgiveness instead of permission                          all clocks are precarious inscrutable windows

He, who had been the one to whom I had Recited my poems and then he wrote them down With his faithful scribal hand for which already He was well known and had been justly praised, Demetrius has died. He lived to be Fifteen years old, and after that four summers. Even the Caesars had heard how good he was. When he fell sick and I knew he was going to die, I didn’t want him to descend to where The Stygian shades are, still a slave, and so I relinquished my ownership of him to his sickness. Deserving by my deed to have gotten well, He knew what I had done and was grateful for it, Calling me his patron, falling free, Down to those waters that are waiting there.

Dieser Flucht folgt Eros, night Verfolger, sondern als Liebender; dergestalt, daß die Schönheit um ihres Scheines willen immer beide flieht: den Verständigen aus Furcht und aus Angst den Liebenden . . . Ob Wahrheit dem Schönen gerecht zu werden vermag? —Walter Benjamin Our eye-beams twisted, and did thread Our eyes, upon one double string. —John Donne blood in my eyes for you —traditional No one comes here anymore. I have a token NO I have an idea NO I was washed up on a lab table, in the traditional manner. “Everybody wants to say the joyful joyfully, and I finally saw it, when I was destroyed.” Talk all you like, you’re already dead. ** Mary, would you like to come outside? Mary worked so long and hard In the palace of black and white. Mary knows things I don’t know. She knows every tear I’ve cried. She gave her life to seeing sight. Mary, Mary, when will you come outside? ** Well, we have these instruments ** Beauty is a tooth. Correction: The telephone rang. I was looking At brown, there’s a history I’m not getting into, beauty Is still a tooth. Correction: Nobody wanted to go to the post office. ** Individually a vision, a vision Individuate. You manx. "Yeah, it’s that paper that lights up When you look at it.” But why did The ground start moving? Catch up. She knew it was happening before It started to happen. Catch up. “What did you do, pay for Those eyes?” ** Opaque:   the rose is not red until your eyes fall upon it. Translucent:   the rose is not red until your eyes. Transparent:   the rose is not red. ** Etc. Look, the story concerns Mary, and Mary alone. Mary alone in her colorless tower. Snow will fall, day turn to night, and not even postmen evade her sight, Lidless, fulfilling the ancient dream, she sees the tanks roll into Gaza And dieters, she sees with all-encompassing eyes the shredding of orders, Kids sneaking into The Story of O, the football scrimmage, and Manhattan Ending, she sees the end of Paris and Fort Worth, she watches subways melt Sleeplessly, she knew how it all would work out, she trains her dials on the death Of kings sitting sadly by the waterfront shacks, she sees beyond the genius Of Edwards Teller, Hopper, and Lear. You and I are the trouble she’s seen. Mary, wouldn’t you like to come outside? Mary, Mary, when will you come outside? ** The sky was black. The sky was blue. I was sitting someplace. I saw it. ** The community got together, as communities will, And waited together for death. Some of us Were colorblind, so when they lifted the red flag To signal the drink, we had to be prodded By neighbors. In a couple of cases, There were clusters of the colorblind, after all A genetic trait: these familial bands Required repeated prodding by strangers On the outskirts. It produced a wavelike pattern, All this prodding, so that to an outside observer, One tuning in from remote satellite, for example, It was reminiscent of a Busby Berkeley scene, Or one of those marching band routines In which the scrambling about of the sousaphone players Suddenly blossoms into a starfish or some kind of Risqué joke. But within fifteen minutes or so, The prodding subsided, and after that the drinking, The twitching, and we all lay dead in the field. ** After she emerged, she saw red, and it was red. She emerged, and saw yellow. She saw blue. After she emerged, she saw what green was like. She saw purple and orange and gray.

Because the ostracized experience the world in ways peculiar to themselves, often seeing it clearly yet with such anger and longing that they sometimes enlarge what they see, she at first saw Brigantine as a paradise for gulls. She must be a horseshoe crab washed ashore. How startling, though, no one knew about her past, the scandal with Percy, the tragic early deaths, yet sad that her Frankenstein had become just a name, like Dracula or Satan, something that stood for a kind of scariness, good for a laugh. She found herself welcome everywhere. People would tell her about Brigantine Castle, turned into a house of horror. They thought she'd be pleased that her monster roamed its dark corridors, making children scream. They lamented the day it was razed. Thus Mary Shelley found herself accepted by those who had no monster in them — the most frightening people alive, she thought. Didn't they know Frankenstein had abandoned his creation, set him loose without guidance or a name? Didn't they know what it feels like to be lost, freaky, forever seeking who you are? She was amazed now that people believed you could shop for everything you might need. She loved that in the dunes you could almost hide. At the computer store she asked an expert if there was such a thing as too much knowledge, or going too far? He directed her to a website where he thought the answers were. Yet Mary Shelley realized that the pain she felt all her life was gone. Could her children, dead so young, be alive somewhere, too? She couldn't know that only her famous mother had such a chance. She was almost ready to praise this awful world.

In a visually spectacular dream some years back, I took Paul Klee’s posthumous class in poetry and painting. What luck to be swept with the elect across the ocean that night to environs that could only be by Klee.Klee? you protest.Surely the dreamer is everyone in her dream.

I have envied those who make something useful, sturdy— a chair, a pair of boots. Even a soup, rich with potatoes and cream. Or those who fix, perhaps, a leaking window: strip out the old cracked putty, lay down cleanly the line of the new. You could learn, the mirror tells me, late at night, but lacks conviction. One reflected eyebrow quivers a little. I look at this borrowed apartment— everywhere I question it, the wallpaper’s pattern matches. Yesterday a woman showed me a building shaped like the overturned hull of a ship, its roof trusses, under the plaster, lashed with soaked rawhide, the columns’ marble painted to seem like wood. Though possibly it was the other way around? I look at my unhandy hand, innocent, shaped as the hands of others are shaped. Even the pen it holds is a mystery, really. Rawhide, it writes, and chair, and marble. Eyebrow. Later the woman asked me— I recognized her then, my sister, my own young self— Does a poem enlarge the world, or only our idea of the world?

After the biopsy, after the bone scan, after the consult and the crying, for a few hours no one could find them, not even my sister, because it turns out they'd gone to the movies. Something tragic was playing, something epic, and so they went to the comedy with their popcorn and their cokes, the old wife whispering everything twice, the old husband cupping a palm to his ear, as the late sun lit up an orchard behind the strip mall, and they sat in the dark holding hands.

One was quite certain that for a long part of his being one being living he had been trying to be certain that he was wrong in doing what he was doing and then when he could not come to be certain that he had been wrong in doing what he had been doing, when he had completely convinced himself that he would not come to be certain that he had been wrong in doing what he had been doing he was really certain then that he was a great one and he certainly was a great one. Certainly every one could be certain of this thing that this one is a great one. Some said of him, when anybody believed in him they did not then believe in any other one. Certainly some said this of him. He certainly very clearly expressed something. Some said that he did not clearly express anything. Some were certain that he expressed something very clearly and some of such of them said that he would have been a greater one if he had not been one so clearly expressing what he was expressing. Some said he was not clearly expressing what he was expressing and some of such of them said that the greatness of struggling which was not clear expression made of him one being a completely great one. Some said of him that he was greatly expressing something struggling. Some said of him that he was not greatly expressing something struggling. He certainly was clearly expressing something, certainly sometime any one might come to know that of him. Very many did come to know it of him that he was clearly expressing what he was expressing. He was a great one. Any one might come to know that of him. Very many did some to know that of him. Some who came to know that of him, that he was a great one, that he was clearly expressing something, came then to be certain that he was not greatly expressing something being struggling. Certainly he was expressing something being struggling. Any one could be certain that he was expressing something being struggling. Some were certain that he was greatly expressing this thing. Some were certain that he was not greatly expressing this thing. Every one could come to be certain that he was a great man. Any one could come to be certain that he was clearly expressing something. Some certainly were wanting to be needing to be doing what he was doing, that is clearly expressing something. Certainly they were willing to be wanting to be a great one. They were, that is some of them, were not wanting to be needing expressing anything being struggling. And certainly he was one not greatly expressing something being struggling, he was a great one, he was clearly expressing something. Some were wanting to be doing what he was doing that is clearly expressing something. Very many were doing what he was doing, not greatly expressing something being struggling. Very many were wanting to be doing what he was doing were not wanting to be expressing anything being struggling. There were very many wanting to be doing what he was doing that is to be one clearly expressing something. He was certainly a great man, any one could be really certain of this thing, every one could be certain of this thing. There were very many who were wanting to be ones doing what he was doing that is to be ones clearly expressing something and then very many of them were not wanting to be being ones doing that thing, that is clearly expressing something, they wanted to be ones expressing something being struggling, something being going to be some other thing, something being going to be something some one sometime would be clearly expressing and that would be something that would be a thing then that would then be greatly expressing some other thing than that thing, certainly very many were then not wanting to be doing what this one was doing clearly expressing something and some of them had been ones wanting to be doing that thing wanting to be ones clearly expressing something. Some were wanting to be ones doing what this one was doing wanted to be ones clearly expressing something. Some of such of them were ones certainly clearly expressing something, that was in them a thing not really interesting then any other one. Some of such of them went on being all their living ones wanting to be clearly expressing something and some of them were clearly expressing something. This one was one very many were knowing some and very many were glad to meet him, very many sometimes listened to him, some listened to him very often, there were some who listened to him, and he talked then and he told them then that certainly he had been one suffering and he was then being one trying to be certain that he was wrong in doing what he was doing and he had come then to be certain that he never would be certain that he was doing what it was wrong for him to be doing then and he was suffering then and he was certain that he would be one doing what he was doing and he was certain that he should be one doing what he was doing and he was certain that he would always be one suffering and this then made him certain this, that he would always be one being suffering, this made him certain that he was expressing something being struggling and certainly very many were quite certain that he was greatly expressing something being struggling. This one was one knowing some who were listening to him and he was telling very often about being one suffering and this was not a dreary thing to any one hearing that then, it was not a saddening thing to any one hearing it again and again, to some it was quite an interesting thing hearing it again and again, to some it was an exciting thing hearing it again and again, some knowing this one and being certain that this one was a great man and was one clearly expressing something were ones hearing this one telling about being one being living were hearing this one telling this thing again and again. Some who were ones knowing this one and were ones certain that this one was one who was clearly telling something, was a great man, were not listening very often to this one telling again and again about being one being living. Certainly some who were certain that this one was a great man and one clearly expressing something and greatly expressing something being struggling were listening to this one telling about being living telling about this again and again and again. Certainly very many knowing this one and being certain that this one was a great man and that this one was clearly telling something were not listening to this one telling about being living, were not listening to this one telling this again and again. This one was certainly a great man, this one was certainly clearly expressing something. Some were certain that this one was clearly expressing something being struggling, some were certain that this one was not greatly expressing something being struggling. Very many were not listening again and again to this one telling about being one being living.  Some were listening again and again to this one telling about this one being one being in living. Some were certainly wanting to be doing what this one was doing that is were wanting to be ones clearly expressing something. Some of such of them did not go on in being ones wanting to be doing what this one was doing that is in being ones clearly expressing something. Some went on being ones wanting to be doing what this one was doing that is, being ones clearly expressing something. Certainly this one was one who was a great man. Any one could be certain of this thing. Every one would come to be certain of this thing. This one was one, some were quite certain, one greatly expressing something being struggling. This one was one, some were quite certain, one not greatly expressing something being struggling.