517 Social commentaries poems

after Jean Follain In the evenings they listen to the same tunes nobody could call happy somebody turns up at the edge of town the roses bloom and an old dinner bell rings once more under the thunder clouds In front of the porch posts of the store a man seated on a soda water case turns around and spits and says to everybody in his new set of clothes holding up his hands as long as I live nobody touches my dogs my friends

After I had cut off my hands and grown new ones something my former hands had longed for came and asked to be rocked. After my plucked out eyes had withered, and new ones grown something my former eyes had wept for came asking to be pitied.

noctes illustratas (the night has houses) and the shadow of the fabulous broken into handfuls—these can be placed at regular intervals, candles walking down the streets at times eclipsed by trees. Certain cells, it’s said, can generate light on their own. There are organisms that could fit on the head of a pin and light entire rooms. Throughout the Middle Ages, you could hire a man on any corner with a torch to light you home were lamps made of horn and from above a loom of moving flares, we watched Notre Dame seem small. Now the streets and stand still. By 1890, it took a pound of powdered magnesium to photograph a midnight ball. While as early as 50 BCE, riotous soldiers leaving a Roman bath sliced through the ropes that hung the lamps from tree to tree and aloft us this new and larger room Flambeaux the arboreal was the wife of Julius Caesar in whose streets in which a single step could be heard. We opened all our windows and looked out on a listening world laced here and there with points of light, Notre Dame of the Unfinished Sky, oil slicks burning on the river; someone down on the corner striking a match to read by. Some claim Paris was the first modern city to light its streets. The inhabitants were ordered in 1524 to place a taper in every window in the dark there were 912 streets walked into this arc until by stars makes steps sharp, you are and are not alone by public decree October 1558: the lanterns were similar to those used in mines: “Once we were kings” and down into the spiral of our riches still reign:falots or great vases of pitch lit at the crossroads —and thus were we followed through a city of thieves—which, but a few weeks later, were replaced by chandeliers. While others claim all London was alight by 1414. There it was worded: Out of every window, come a wrist with a lanthorn and were told hold it there and be on time and not before and watched below the faces lit, and watched the faces pass.         And turned back in (the face goes on) and watched the lights go out. Here the numbers are instructive: In the early 18th century, London hung some 15,000 lamps. And now we find (1786) they’ve turned to crystal, placed precisely, each its own distance, small in islands, large in the time it would take to run. And Venice started in 1687 with a bell upon the hearing of which, we all in unison exit, match in hand, and together strike them against an upper tooth and touch the tiny flame to anything, and when times get rough (crime up, etc.) all we have to do is throw oil out upon the canals to make the lighting uncommonly extensive. Sometimes we do it just to shock the rest of Europe, and at other times because we find it beautiful. Says Libanius Night differs us Without us noctes illustratas Though in time of public grief when the streets were left unlit, on we went, just dark marks in the markets and voices in the cafes, in the crowded squares, a single touch, the living, a lantern swinging above the door any time a child is born, be it Antioch, Syria, or Edessa— and then there were the festivals, the festum encaeniorum, and others in which they call idolatrous, these torches half a city wide be your houses.

We gaze into your eyes, eyes, eyes, eyes. We forget the display is blind. Your fanned tail really a cupped palm, gathering each hen’s quiver to your ear, your feathers the green-blue glamours of reflective absence. No one ever praises the ass of the peacock, grin of quills that does the heavy lifting, or how you eat anything from ants to Styrofoam, from cheese to chicken. Road roamer, flower devourer: the one who’ll pick a fight with a goat. Preen all you want. What I love of you will be the bare undercarriage, the calamus. I am done with beauty. Only a blinking eye can measure the light.

Clarice, the Swiss Appraiser, paces our rooms, listing furnishings on her yellow legal pad with a Waterman pen, a microcamera. Although I've asked why we have to do this, I forgot the answer. The answer to why is because, inscrutable, outside of logic, helpless, useless because. Wing chairs, a deco lamp, my mother's cherry dining table—nothing we both loved using looks tragic. Most nights now I sit in the den reading the colorful spines of your art books, Fra Angelico to Zurburan, volume after volume of Balthus, Botticelli, Cezanne, Degas, Michelangelo, Monet, Titian, Velasquez. Friends. An art school's asked for them— after all, they have no "real" value now, except to me.... Upstairs, Cerise—is that her name?—gasps at the bentwood chaise, the blonde moderne bedroom "set" my parents bought on their two-day Depression honeymoon in Manhattan. I know this has something to do with paying taxes. Last night, a real icy February zero, I went out to start the engine of the car you gave me on my birthday, to keep it going, then came in and forgot it till this morning. I woke to the city's recycling truck grinding my papers and plastic bottles and my motor running. And still, I wasn't out of gas, Our neighbor, his head in a red bandana, yelled, "We didn't want to bother you at one in the morning!" and I thought,How did you know I wasn't in there, suiciding? Cerise means "cherry," Clarice means "light" or "famous"— is her name Clarissa? What is she saying? She's blurring, she looks like a Candice, she looks nice enough, but I'll defer judgement until she's finished this business. If I let on I felt sad, remember my mother's advice? "Everyone should collect something!" That was her path to the purpose-driven life, along rows of a flea market, then alone in her house jammed with the nicked, the chipped, ceramics with dings, the inscribed wedding bands of strangers— damaged things that always needed gluing or polishing. I tried not to teach our children the world's a dangerous place, but there we were, four of us, plunked into history, listening to Dylan. Then, two of us. Our son and daughter out in it, unafraid, purposeful.... Somehow, life veered from the script. I should get a new cell phone, but eighteen of your messages are in/on my old one and can't be transferred. How can Verizon say your voice isn't really in there at all, calling home to me?—Then where is it? Why should it disappear from somewhere is unapparently isn't? Why should my living here be so metaphysical? Callista enters our bedroom, the room sacrosanct to me, off-limits, but no matter. She scans our night tables, our TV, our pills and lotions and clippers. Oh, morning here you'd perform what you'd call your "ablutions" while I read the paper in bed. Pearl slinks from her place on my pillow, Bogey's hunched in the clothes closer on your shearling slippers, Hosni Mubarak's been deposed, Benghazi's a riot of freedom until the Khadaffis say it isn't. The day you died,  I knew what people meant by saying the earth stopped spinning on its axis. No choice but to write myself, to keep going. Today's Science Times s ays we're not in the Garden of Eden anymore— well, that shouldn't give evolutionary biologists pause. Life, says the geologists, is a natural consequence of geology. Geology? I know there's got to be more to be written. Clarissa, Clarinda, Career, whatever your name is, pack up your digital camera, your officious watery pen, your scrutineer's notepad, you're in the wrong biosphere, your data will never add up—Clarity, I think we're done here.

This is my cap, this is my overcoat, here is my shave kit in its linen pouch. Some field rations: my dish, my tumbler, here in the tin-plate I’ve scratched my name. Scratched it here with this precious nail I keep concealed from coveting eyes. In the bread bag I have a pair of wool socks and a few things that I discuss with no one, and these form a pillow for my head at night. Some cardboard lies between me and the ground. The pencil’s the thing I love the most: By day it writes verses I make up at night. This is my notebook, this my rain gear, this is my towel, this is my twine.

To John Bernard Myers In the corner lot where they parked green banana trucks fruits palmed in paper straw I smell bedbug & kitchen-cockroach summer afternoons Somewhere tailless one-eyed cats doting in fat garbage cans screaming with the stench of rice & beans strawberry tampax piled high as the smell (I was small & slick) the covers tilted like the hat of a rock-look wino in a deep knee-bend nod on a beer can-street Sunday morning There were always time-thick empty nights of nothing to do but listen to the ethereal (she lived on the top floor) I-go-for-more screams of Charlie's pimp's woman when he beat her for his good business principles joy-pop the block with morning-talk I hear the dim iron dawn yawning (I lived on Third Ave.) rattle nights into Saturday morning flag-bloomer eclipses just before the hunt— they were as big— the cats like jungle bunnies fierce with fleas & sores I see window-people hanging out of gooey-stick slips sweating strange below-the-button drawers crouched junkies in hallways with monkey backs eating cellophane bananas on a g-string waiting for that last bust Spies with cock-comb hair fronts ear-gulping mambo music eye-lapping pepperican flower crotches I can hear the streets whispering in the ears of yelping kids in the fun-gushing that rippled my blood in the pump but the kids are dying in the lot like the tarry-blown feet of the rain jingling on the rusty-green of yesterday's fire-escapes.

* Lime coats the thick sheaf of paper crossed by thin, parallel lines of a darker green. They approximate the rippling surface of a river pregnant with water and smoothly traveling towards an orb of sea salt. His pen is a black crow against a sunlit sky. Its ink is harsh, blotting paper, even with the neat economy of motion in how the ink is laid. For a moment, a golden spark glints from a cufflink struck by a sun ray. Meticulously, the ink travels from point to point, dipping, then rising, then dipping again until it is halted by one of the four walls of a square. The paper mottles. He lays the pen besides the projection of a likelihood as an ache begins between his shoulder blades. As he rolls his head in a circle, he considers the placement of a decimal point. Lastly, he considers the definition of a percentage to be the probability of error instead of the probability of an answer’s relevance. * It seems a secretary with large hair is shuffling until he notices that it is only a tight skirt hampering her thighs. He begins to feel the papers stacked on a crudenza curling their edges to protest being ignored. A lock of hair falls in front of his eyeballs and he notices a white feather. He immediately comprehends how long it has been since scissors tip-toed about his scalp. Bereft, he looks at his desk and is astonished at how still his fingers lie atop a yellow pad—he would have sworn his fear would have left his empty palms quaking at how time is consistently ending. * He looks up to be surprised at midnight “a done deal.” His hands seek release and he wipes them against the pin-striped wool encasing his thighs. A woman with a blurred face atop a blue silk shirt pops her head through the door. He knows she is speaking but his gaze cannot locate the source of the buzzing. He feels a fleeting thought of inebriated bees, how they might blunder with pollen gratuitously. His gaze falls to the circle of diamonds on her left, blue-veined wrist. He takes a chance and replies, “Yes.” It is sufficient to make her go away so that all that remains across his threshold is the shadow of a door. He feels he must complete the job by shutting a door but he is so tired. * Was I ever a boy? he asks himself as he watches the Chairman hold hands with his tall wife. The wife smiles but it is clear she is dangling her legs over a pedestal. When he reaches them for an obligatory greeting, he realizes (without being surprised at the certainty of this thought) that she smells expensive. He hears her emerald earrings tinkle like wind chimes. His breath is the breeze against her pale, seamless skin. She smiles at him and he feels even smaller. His breath is the flutter of a Trochilidae’s wings. When he next turns to the Chairman, he is buffeted by the Chairman’s smug grin. * He tattoos his fingerprints on the most random of surfaces. It happens that way each morning when he must read six newspapers beside The Wall Street Journal. One is in Japanese. Another in German. He cannot recall the last time he was lucid. He cuts himself shaving whenever the mirror reminds him that his eyes are covered by red cracks. They remind him of bigger faultlines just waiting to widen. He knows he will fold into himself during the fall. He feels that avoidance should be under his control. But it is not happening and he is often immobilized by this failure. * I should fall in love, he thinks, as he reads a worn newspaper clipping. It has traveled throughout the firm and reached him at last. He flinches at the leers clinging to the message. His fingers feel wet though the clipping is dry. The clipping is about Alan “Swift” Thiessen, the man who once sat in an office down the hall. Once, Swift was a tight muscle tightly sheathed in Italian suits with double-breasted blazers, a sartorial sun amidst the human commodities forging together a partnership. It was an eccentricity allowed by Swift’s ability to bleed rain from desiccated clients. Once, Swift also played squash every day. Now, Swift is clad in rough cotton and measures each passing moment in a jail, staring at rust and bricks. The newspaper reports how Swift went too far with a young, blonde boy sheathed in leather with metal studs. Still, The Investment Banker suggests to himself that he fall in love. Despite Swift’s ignominious end, he feels that Swift still bested him by having felt certain compulsions about which he can only remain curious. * At 4 a.m. he is not displeased to be alone walking the streets. At 4 a.m., he feels that the hour offers a certain excuse for his loneliness. Now, he is walking in the aftermath of an unseasonal rain so that the light is clean and the pavement shines from the wash of water. The tall buildings conspire to maintain sufficient lights to surround him like Christmas. He notices a white flower in a bud vase by a window he passes. It is unexpected but pleasing and he pauses to think,Hello! He knows he is imagining things but he senses the flower open its petals a tad wider. His nostrils flare at the inexplicable perfume of jasmine. He looks forward to winter when snow will cover the city. Even in a blizzard, the snow is constant. They never fail to cling softly to him as he walks in their midst. He feels,It is such a loving feeling.

Now spring appears, with beauty crowned And all is light and life around, Why comes not Jane? When friendship calls, Why leaves she not Augusta’s walls? Where cooling zephyrs faintly blow, Nor spread the cheering, healthful glow That glides through each awakened vein, As skimming o’er the spacious plain, We look around with joyous eye, And view no boundaries but the sky. Already April’s reign is o’er, Her evening tints delight no more; No more the violet scents the gale, No more the mist o’erspreads the vale; The lovely queen of smiles and tears, Who gave thee birth, no more appears; But blushing May, with brow serene, And vestments of a livelier green, Commands the winged choir to sing, And with wild notes the meadows ring. O come! ere all the train is gone, No more to hail thy twenty-one; That age which higher honour shares, And well become the wreath it wears. From lassitude and cities flee, And breathe the air of heaven, with me.

And although I am a poet, I am not the bullet; I will not heat-search the soft points. I am not the coroner who will graze her hand over naked knees. Who will swish her fingers in the mouth. Who will flip the body over, her eye a hook fishing for government-issued lead. I am not the sidewalk, which is unsurprised as another cheek scrapes harsh against it. Although I too enjoy soft palms on me; enjoy when he rests on my body with a hard breath; I have clasped this man inside me and released him again and again, listening to him die thousands of little deaths. What is a good metaphor for a woman who loves in a time like this? I am no scalpel or high thread count sheet. Not a gavel, or hand-painted teacup. I am neither           nor romanced by the streetlamp nor candlelight; my hands are not an iron, but look, they’re hot, look how I place them           in love           on his skin and am still able to unwrinkle his spine.