Ron Padgett

If you asked an Elizabethan What are you on? he or she would have answered The earth, this terrestrial globe whereas today it means What medication are you taking? (Are you taking has less energy than What medication it is an anticlimax without a climax) And today What are you on about? would have sounded like What are you of thereabouts in? and will So what medications are you on? I am taking italics it pokes a hole in whatever is going to be so I can slip through and not have arms and legs all the time You've lost me and I'm not even an Elizabethan That's O.K. neither am I though both of us bestride this terrestrial globe and fain would lie down for the earth is a medication a giant pill we ride on like the aspirin in the poem I wrote in 1966 and didn't understand until last night or was it this morning A.M. and P.M. are medications I take one in the morning and one in the evening Some day people will look back at the twentieth century and think How backward they were the way some look back now at tribal societies and say But primitive life was so dirty how could you keep things clean? not knowing that tribal people lived in the Garden of Eden comparatively speaking That is they had more humanity than later people who traded theirs for technology so that those people who look back at Earth some day from a distant galaxy will not be people at all comparatively speaking they will be cue balls But this morning I am not in a billiard situation the sun is shining onto my house and the trees are feeling like their tops because they are still in the Garden of Eden that is the gentle endless hush of an endless mother to her endless newborn child Things are there covered with sparkles that have nothing to do with sunlight the way one night I got out of bed and found that I was covered with sparkles very small ones I wondered if I would be covered with sparkles the rest of my life and if other people had them But these are not the same sparkles that things have on them except the ocean sometimes at night By day the ocean moves away from where it was but a mountain does not Somewhere in between lies Hidden Valley where Grandpa comes out of his cabin and staggers around the dooryard then goes back inside where Grandma is holding a baking tin of fresh hot biscuits but she will give him none Give me some biscuits he cries but she smiles and shakes her head They are all for me she exults and then laughs she is only joking Grandpa sits down at the table and pretends to be dead revived only by die muffled thud of the biscuit tin Where's mah coffee he roars even though he sees it in the cup before him and Grandma says We're plumb out That's how the day begins in Hidden Valley But where are the grandchildren They are scattered about the world in jagged pieces that move like birds in spring with colors and speedometers on them Someday they will return to Hidden Valley and form another mountain to make Hidden Valley even more hidden when the waterfall closes over it You think I don't know where it is or is that just a ploy to get me to tell you? You are like the guy who looked all over for his hat and later learned it was on his head but it didn't mean anything until he realized he had a head and that the hat was both on and inside it and when he did it was not a rabbit that he pulled out but a rectangle in which the rabbit was imprisoned You don't want to be that guy, do you? You would rather be the rabbit when all along you could have been the waterfall We move ahead in our story to five years later then we move five years back because there is no story only a collection of events with no beginning, no end, and therefore no middle, it is all one big beginning, middle, and end every second and though you are in it you are also to the side like an actor waiting in the wings for the cue that will cause the stage to light up and expand though it is also the cue for the audience to rise and head for the exits, because they are the real players and you, it turns out, are part of the scenery propped up against a wall, gathering dust along your top ridge, for soon you will be transported to Hidden Valley and placed among the other mountains One of these mountains is the Earl of Essex covered with the crud of having galloped all the way across Wales and England nonstop Essex who dashed up the palace stairs and barged into Elizabeth's private chamber unannounced —where no man had ever set foot— midst the gasps and cries of her ladies-in-waiting and there it is his face on the front of his head and her face coming off her head and starting toward him because she knew right then his head would be severed from his body but what she did not know is that he too would end up in Hidden Valley raining down his sparkles upon the house of Grandma and Grandpa Are you enjoying your vacation Yes I am in fact so much that I don't even think of it as a vacation or as anything else and come to think of it I don't even think of it it's just the way things are How about you Yes I too am enjoying my vacation Well good Silence What you just said about your vacation I'm not sure I understand what you mean I didn't mean much of anything I guess The mountains around here have a way of making me not think very much maybe because they aren't thinking at all who knows and I tend to become like whatever I'm around But you're always around air do you turn into air Yes I'm always air What about Grandma and Grandpa are you turning into them No I can't turn into them I already am them Well that is very interesting but I have to scoot along now And a fine day to you as well Ireland rose up on the horizon backlit by history but Hidden Valley was too powerful it made Ireland sink back down though the voices of Ireland could be heard in the distance some singing others laughing and some wailing and scolding and then they too faded when Grandpa brandished his lips at them for he wished to sing himself and all alone on the veranda of his own personality the one built partly by him and partly by the celestial carpenters who found his scratchy gurgling caterwauling arias to be as astonishing as he found them to be beautiful and moving— arias that caused tears to gush forth from the sky you could see when you looked up into his eyes not long after you were born the sky at night and professional wrestling was on TV Antonino Rocca bounded around the ring evading horrible huge guys who fought dirty the kind you would find only in New York City when it was in black and white little Antonino who looked like a short-order cook in a diner but who dodged and slid and leaped so fast the horrible big guys couldn't catch him but when they did, Ow! Get away, Antonino! and he came back to life and slithered free and hurled the big guys down and one-two-three boom they were pinned and once more he smiled at people like us out in the middle of nowhere prompting Grandpa to clear his throat and say It's time for bed it's way past time and it was but we were hidden outside of time and no one would know because they were visible inside of time I was happy in Hidden Valley happy enough and I'm happy I once lived there Maybe I'll find myself there again someday even though the mountains will be gone and the rest changed beyond all recognition

All right, I admit it: It was just a dream I had last night. I was trudging along a muddy path in a column of downcast men on the blackened outskirts of New York, the twilight dingy and ruined, the future without hope as we marched along in our soiled, proletarian rags. To my left was Mayakovsky, head shaved, and next to him his friend with gray beard and dark cap. "You've got to admit," Mayakovsky was saying, "that this is a pretty good way to write a poem." "Yes," I said, "the momentum is sustained by our walking forward, the desolate landscape seeps into every word, and you're free to say anything you want." "That's because we're inside the poem," he said, "not outside." Puddles of oily water gleamed dully beneath the low clouds. "That's why my poems were so big: there's more room inside." The hard line of his jaw flexed and the men dispersed. I followed his friend behind a wall to hear the poem go on in the lecture the friend was giving on history, but no, the real poem had finished. I went back to the spot where the poem had finished. Vladimir had left the poem.

At 14th Street and First Avenue Is a bank and in the bank the sexiest teller of all time Next to her the greatest thing about today Is today itself Through which I go up To buy books They float by under a bluer sky The girls uptown Quiet, pampered The sum of all that's terrible in women And much of the best And the old men go by holding small packages In a trance So rich even they can't believe it I think it's a red, white, and blue letter day for them too You see, Con Ed's smokestacks are beautiful The way Queens is And horses: from a pleasant distance Or a fleet of turkeys Stuffed in a spotless window In two days they'll be sweating in ovens Thinking, "How did I ever get in a fix like this?" Light pouring over buildings far away Up here when someone shouts "Hey!" In the street you know that they aren't going to kill you They're yelling to a friend of theirs named Hey John David Hey, perhaps And the garbage goes out In big white billowy plastic bags tied at the top And even the people go out in them Some are waiting now At the bus stop (for a nonexistent bus) And I thought it was garbage! It's so pretty! If you're classless or modern You can have fun by Walking into a high-class antique store So the stately old snob at the desk will ask In eternity "You're going where?" You get to answer, "Up." I like these old pricks If you have an extra hair in the breeze Their eyes pop out And then recede way back As if to say, "That person is on . . . dope!" They're very correct But they're not in my shoes In front of a Dubuffet a circus that shines through A window in a bright all-yellow building The window is my eye And Frank O'Hara is the building I'm thinking about him like mad today (As anyone familiar with his poetry will tell) And about the way Madison Avenue really Does go to heaven And turns around and comes back, disappointed Because up here you can look down on the janitor Or pity him And rent a cloud-colored Bentley and Architecture's so wonderful! Why don't I notice it more often? And the young girls and boys but especially the young girls Are drifting away from school In blue and white wool Wrapped in fur Are they French? They're speaking French! And they aren't looking for things to throw Skirts sliding up the legs of girls who can't keep from grinning Under beautiful soft brown American eyes At the whole world Which includes their Plain Jane girlfriends She even smiled at me! I have about as much chance of fucking her as the girl at the bank But I stride along, a terrifying god Raunchy A little one-day-old beard And good grief I really did forget to brush my teeth this morning They're turning red with embarrassment Or is that blood I've been drinking—I ordered a black coffee Miss And then a black policeman comes in Unbuttoning his uniform at the warmish soda fountain While I pull the fleece over my teeth And stare innocently at the books I've bought One a book with a drawing By Apollinaire called Les Fraises au Mexique Strawberries in Mexico But when I open the book to that page It's just a very blue sky I'm looking at

"And then there were three whereas before there had been four or two And then there were four or two." Thus spake the King. No one dared ask what it meant. He seemed satisfied by the beauty of the logic that had arrived, the royal hall now lightly radiant as he arose from his throne and the world fell away, courtiers, battlements, and clouds, and he rose like a piece of paper on which his effigy had been traced in dotted lines whose dots came loose and flew away to a place in history where nothing mattered. And then there was one.

The morning coffee. I'm not sure why I drink it. Maybe it's the ritual of the cup, the spoon, the hot water, the milk, and the little heap of brown grit, the way they come together to form a nail I can hang the day on. It's something to do between being asleep and being awake. Surely there's something better to do, though, than to drink a cup of instant coffee. Such as meditate? About what? About having a cup of coffee. A cup of coffee whose first drink is too hot and whose last drink is too cool, but whose many in-between drinks are, like Baby Bear's por- ridge, just right. Papa Bear looks disgruntled. He removes his spectacles and swivels his eyes onto the cup that sits before Baby Bear, and then, after a discrete cough, reaches over and picks it up. Baby Bear doesn't understand this disruption of the morning routine. Papa Bear brings the cup close to his face and peers at it intently. The cup shatters in his paw, explodes actually, sending fragments and brown liquid all over the room. In a way it's good that Mama Bear isn't there. Better that she rest in her grave beyond the garden, unaware of what has happened to the world.

I’m in the house. It’s nice out: warm sun on cold snow. First day of   spring or last of   winter. My legs run down the stairs and out the door, my top half   here typing

Let me cook you some dinner. Sit down and take off your shoes and socks and in fact the rest of your clothes, have a daquiri, turn on some music and dance around the house, inside and out, it’s night and the neighbors are sleeping, those dolts, and the stars are shining bright, and I’ve got the burners lit for you, you hungry thing.

Everything is perfect, dear friend. — KEROUAC Get some sleep. Don't give advice. Take care of your teeth and gums. Don't be afraid of anything beyond your control. Don't be afraid, for instance, that the building will collapse as you sleep, or that someone you love will suddenly drop dead. Eat an orange every morning. Be friendly. It will help make you happy. Raise your pulse rate to 120 beats per minute for 20 straight minutes four or five times a week doing anything you enjoy. Hope for everything. Expect nothing. Take care of things close to home first. Straighten up your room before you save the world. Then save the world. Know that the desire to be perfect is probably the veiled expression of another desire—to be loved, perhaps, or not to die. Make eye contact with a tree. Be skeptical about all opinions, but try to see some value in each of them. Dress in a way that pleases both you and those around you. Do not speak quickly. Learn something every day. (Dzien dobre!) Be nice to people before they have a chance to behave badly. Don't stay angry about anything for more than a week, but don't forget what made you angry. Hold your anger out at arm's length and look at it, as if it were a glass ball. Then add it to your glass ball collection. Be loyal. Wear comfortable shoes. Design your activities so that they show a pleasing balance and variety. Be kind to old people, even when they are obnoxious. When you become old, be kind to young people. Do not throw your cane at them when they call you Grandpa. They are your grandchildren! Live with an animal. Do not spend too much time with large groups of people. If you need help, ask for it. Cultivate good posture until it becomes natural. If someone murders your child, get a shotgun and blow his head off. Plan your day so you never have to rush. Show your appreciation to people who do things for you, even if you have paid them, even if they do favors you don't want. Do not waste money you could be giving to those who need it. Expect society to be defective. Then weep when you find that it is far more defective than you imagined. When you borrow something, return it in an even better condition. As much as possible, use wooden objects instead of plastic or metal ones. Look at that bird over there. After dinner, wash the dishes. Calm down. Visit foreign countries, except those whose inhabitants have expressed a desire to kill you. Don't expect your children to love you, so they can, if they want to. Meditate on the spiritual. Then go a little further, if you feel like it. What is out (in) there? Sing, every once in a while. Be on time, but if you are late do not give a detailed and lengthy excuse. Don't be too self-critical or too self-congratulatory. Don't think that progress exists. It doesn't. Walk upstairs. Do not practice cannibalism. Imagine what you would like to see happen, and then don't do anything to make it impossible. Take your phone off the hook at least twice a week. Keep your windows clean. Extirpate all traces of personal ambitiousness. Don't use the word extirpate too often. Forgive your country every once in a while. If that is not possible, go to another one. If you feel tired, rest. Grow something. Do not wander through train stations muttering, "We're all going to die!" Count among your true friends people of various stations of life. Appreciate simple pleasures, such as the pleasure of chewing, the pleasure of warm water running down your back, the pleasure of a cool breeze, the pleasure of falling asleep. Do not exclaim, "Isn't technology wonderful!" Learn how to stretch your muscles. Stretch them every day. Don't be depressed about growing older. It will make you feel even older. Which is depressing. Do one thing at a time. If you burn your finger, put it in cold water immediately. If you bang your finger with a hammer, hold your hand in the air for twenty minutes. You will be surprised by the curative powers of coldness and gravity. Learn how to whistle at earsplitting volume. Be calm in a crisis. The more critical the situation, the calmer you should be. Enjoy sex, but don't become obsessed with it. Except for brief periods in your adolescence, youth, middle age, and old age. Contemplate everything's opposite. If you're struck with the fear that you've swum out too far in the ocean, turn around and go back to the lifeboat. Keep your childish self alive. Answer letters promptly. Use attractive stamps, like the one with a tornado on it. Cry every once in a while, but only when alone. Then appreciate how much better you feel. Don't be embarrassed about feeling better. Do not inhale smoke. Take a deep breath. Do not smart off to a policeman. Do not step off the curb until you can walk all the way across the street. From the curb you can study the pedestrians who are trapped in the middle of the crazed and roaring traffic. Be good. Walk down different streets. Backwards. Remember beauty, which exists, and truth, which does not. Notice that the idea of truth is just as powerful as the idea of beauty. Stay out of jail. In later life, become a mystic. Use Colgate toothpaste in the new Tartar Control formula. Visit friends and acquaintances in the hospital. When you feel it is time to leave, do so. Be honest with yourself, diplomatic with others. Do not go crazy a lot. It's a waste of time. Read and reread great books. Dig a hole with a shovel. In winter, before you go to bed, humidify your bedroom. Know that the only perfect things are a 300 game in bowling and a 27-batter, 27-out game in baseball. Drink plenty of water. When asked what you would like to drink, say, "Water, please." Ask "Where is the loo?" but not "Where can I urinate?" Be kind to physical objects. Beginning at age forty, get a complete "physical" every few years from a doctor you trust and feel comfortable with. Don't read the newspaper more than once a year. Learn how to say "hello," "thank you," and "chopsticks" in Mandarin. Belch and fart, but quietly. Be especially cordial to foreigners. See shadow puppet plays and imagine that you are one of the characters. Or all of them. Take out the trash. Love life. Use exact change. When there's shooting in the street, don't go near the window.

in memory of Lorenzo Thomas How long do you want to go on being the person you think you are? How Long, a city in China The nouns come toward you "Knee how," they say To the cluster of synonyms also approaching . . . has that evening train been gone? How long, how long, baby, how long? Let me know if you ever change your mind about leaving, leaving me behind or at least tell yourself before you find yourself on that train winding its way through the mountains of How Much Province The ten thousand yellow leaves of the ginkgo tree kerplumfed onto the sidewalk on East 12th Street, a deep-pile carpet of them on the roof of the parked car proving that Nature does have a sense of humor, though if a sense of humor falls in the woods and there is no one there to hear it. . . . for everyone has clustered alongside the railroad track for the arrival of night and its shooting stars with trails like pigtails I am among them and I know this track is mine though it does not belong to me Nothing belongs to me for at this moment the boxes are being stacked to make way for you to move through them, reading their labels: family photos, Pick-Up Stix, miscellaneous and the song of the porcelain, the celadon, and Delft itself vibrating How long, how long will this baby take to depart? But I don't want to think about the past I want to be the past, with everything I've ever known and done spread out on a two-dimensional plane erected vertically and moving through the space I occupy on Earth There is a lot more room left in me though everyone I've ever known who's died is there My mother my father say hello to Ted and Joe and laugh with them though Joe knows they are crying too and that Ted is crying and it sounds like laughter They do this to console me and I let them do it, to console them What? I didn't hear you or rather I heard you but I couldn't make out what you said The phone lay in its cradle pretending to be asleep and the blinking light made you think that it was dreaming and that there was someone you were supposed to call— or were they supposed to call you? Supposed. What does that mean. It means no more than the contours of the landscape that is as beautiful as the contours in John Ashbery's poetry but it doesn't mean anything unless you turn your mind on its side and let it lie there inert, and from this inertia will arise a wing, the white wing of a bird that has no anything else, only this one wing that folds and unfolds itself like the magnetic field it rises above in wave after wave after wave. Then it's back to basics: If you bone or debone a chicken it comes out the same, if you dust a cake with sugar you add something but if you dust your house you take away. Oh to be a rock or a stone or even a pebble! Momentarily, for there is much that is unattractive about being a rock. For one thing, I wouldn't be able to finish this poem, I would sit here petrified until they carted me away to a park to serve as ornamental sculpture, if I were lucky. Now that you are convinced of something that you already believed, the wallpaper becomes a fact in the home of Anne and Fairfield Porter, in the upstairs hallway and the bedroom where Jimmy stayed, the wallpaper that here and there was curling off the wall so Joe could tear it off and glue it to a big white sheet of paper. There is no other wallpaper I would ever want. Now the wallpaper goes away, back on the wall in 1969 where I stood and gazed at it for a long time and then went downstairs to add coal to Fairfield's stove, the big Aga he had shipped all the way from Sweden because he was very determined to have it. All day its warmth rose up to the second floor and caressed the wallpaper. Do you mind my going on like this? You want something else, right? Perhaps you want what you think poetry should give you, but poetry doesn't give anyone anything, it simply puts the syllables on the table and lets you rearrange them in your head, which you can do unless your head is a square the size of the tabletop. So why don't you lift your head off the table and go lie down somewhere more comfortable and not worry about anything, including the list of things to worry about that you keep revising in your head, for there is a slot through which that list can slip and float down like a baby in a rocking crib, down to a comfy dreamland and be transformed into a list of gods whose jokes are wonderful. But when the alarm goes off the jokes don't seem funny now that something is missing from them— but what? (You weren't even asleep.) It's not something you feel you're going to remember, it's not as if you can go down the alphabet until you get to a letter that has a special hum because it's the first letter of the name you can't quite recall, it's not as if you can look just to the side of where you think a dim star is and thereby have it magically appear. The glow is gone, and knowing it comes back sometimes is little consolation. But I'll take it and go not to a deserted island but to the factory where they make the bottles that are washed ashore with a message inside, and though the message has been blurred by water stains it's a message, like the poetry in Valéry's saying that poetry is something written by someone other than the poet to someone other than the reader. To you, Paul Valéry,chapeau, though in some of your works no chapeau, for in them it is not a bottle but a test tube one finds one's finger stuck in. • What do you want to do with your life? is a question asked of a young person but slightly modified for an older one: What do you want to do with the rest of your life? Having control is an illusion we like to be fooled by: the pinball machine of experience has bounced us off one thing and onto another bing bing bing! Life might be like a pinball machine but it isn't one, and the trouble is that you might be like a person and you are one, as if in reverie, but then it all seems crambe. And so Sir Thomas Browne walks in with an insane look on his face, he is searching for examples of the number 5, do you have any new ones for him? If not please step aside, and out he goes into the garden, eyes locked onto the vegetation, the afternoon light on the back of his coat. You're relieved he didn't stay long. For God's sake here he comes again. Lock the door! But he performs osmosis and becomes the door and then the room and then you! And you go about the house looking for examples of the number 5 and you don't know why or where it will all lead to. But I do. Who said that? I did. Why did you say that? I didn't. You didn't what? I heard you! You mean you hurt me. No, I . . . I see there's no point in talking to you. And there wasn't for there was no one there, only the residue of an idea that lasted a few moments, like the history of Bulgaria or the rattling of bamboo trees in the wind or the Millennium Hotel in Minneapolis. The water lilies float on the surface of the water unaware that they are being depicted by brushstrokes "I love to be beside your side beside the sea, beside the seaside by the beautiful sea!" we sang underwater glub glub as the propeller turned to face us and we fled because Hitler was the propeller and he was unsanitary So Père Noël took a bath whose bubbles rose up around his beard and tickled his fancy enough to keep him ho-ho-hoing throughout the holiday season, for he was in denial about his powerlessness in the face of Hitler Hitler kept a special area on his face for the powerlessness of Santa Claus, he wore it like a merit badge among the many others that covered his face so that no one could see what he really looked like, the way Santa Claus used his beard to hide the deep sadness he felt for all humanity, for if he arrived on their rooftops weeping and wailing it would not do, it would not do to bring the children model replicas of Auschwitz or dolls in the form of the Butcher of Buchenwald or even of himself with downcast eye and ashen brow. The doctor comes in and says, "What seems to be the trouble?" for the twenty-fifth time today but you are only once today so you say, "There's a pain in my chest it's been there for three days it started on Sunday night right after dinner," but the doctor is thinking about the dinner he is having tonight with an incredibly attractive woman He is more worried about her than he is about your symptom In fact he isn't worried about you at all though he might be worried about being sued by you if he tells you to go home and take an aspirin and when you do you die But maybe you were going to die anyway no matter what he said or did and the lawyer who eagerly took the case on behalf of your family was hit by a car as he crossed the street toward the courthouse steps and your entire family was killed in a plane crash on their way to a Grief Management Center in Arizona But none of this happens because the pain was due to a strained muscle in your chest and now you do remember that right after dinner you tried to stop in midsneeze Two hundred dollars for half a sneeze is the going rate these days The cost of living sticks a hose into your wallet and vacuums out the money in a trice and you are so grateful you aren't having heart surgery that you don't even notice until cold air drifts across the floor like fog in a horror film, the one you decided not to be in, and now it pursues you in the form of frozen air, the evil brother of cool air that filtered down out of the early summer evening and told you that the world is kind, that atoms rearrange themselves to make you feel better, that the sun is departing only because it felt you wanted to be alone for a while It didn't say, "I will never rise again, I will go far away and be a pinprick in the sky among the billions of others, and you will never know which I am and I will never tell you." And you will never answer back, "Sun, I do not think you have that power: only I do, and I will go away and be the sky." Is that what is meant by "aesthetic distance"? Say what? It's as if the Panama Canal had been given aesthetic distance by becoming a passageway in your brain and you floated down it and came out on the end that you started at! Hunh? I keep a ball of laughter inside that Hunh.

Nothing is the way you think it is going to be. Take this little flower from me, and let it go into the way you think of it. And so it grows and is the face of Daisy the cow speaking, she my young grandma growing and wearing a pink slip and who fell from the sky that was clear blue and pure all over the place you called home as it moved out from under you in the slow rotation of the sphere you call a star, a flower, a mind.