Little But Blue

You stood at the port, turned away from land,
watching.  Your eyes tried to hold my body
as my boat shrunk with each
wave’s new rolling.  Your large eyes
tried and tried but I
became the indistinct distance.

Despite my leaving,
how I loved you – like a traveler
who never stops fleeing loves her home port
but cannot find in herself any staying.
In her churns an unrelenting thirst
for beginnings, for the unvaulted sea.

Sometime in the indistinct distance of later,
when she has not seen land,
when she has not seen you
in so long her vision can comprehend
little but blue, when her freshwater
has all been drunk,
she will drink the sea’s water smiling.
When it seals her with the heaviest
thirsting, she will lie dying in her boat’s cabin
thinking of you and little but blue.

Death’s hand dry as longing
will bring her back to the port
where you have stood waiting,
you, still as a sculpture of a scarecrow,
arms strange and outstretched
with patterns like scales scorched into them
by years of sun’s heat.
My death’s arrival will be your first beginning.

This is how I love you.
Turn around, step away –
I am made of endings.
If from afar you believe you hear me singing,
turn away your ears, turn away –
it is only the sea waving,
a boat creaking,
an eccentric bird with a near-human cry –

Some Rumors About People You Used to Know

1.    JoAnn married a man who worships women.  He comes from a country – don’t remember which one – where there’s a cult, where people bow to the female body, pray to its mystery, to its eggs and birth.  He makes eggs with every meal, as part of his belief system.  It works out perfectly for her – don’t you remember from those cafeteria days?  JoAnn always loved scrambled eggs with cheese.


2.     Leonard walks with a cane, though he’s just got a tiny limp.  Barely noticeable.  But wasn’t he always melodramatic, always a song and dance man?


3.    These days, Peter wears an eye patch.  He won’t tell the story unless you pour beer down his throat, so he’s always getting free drinks.  But if you see him, you won’t have to buy a thing, because you’re getting the story right now.  He got caught in a convenience store robbery while trying to buy a banana and some Camel Filters.  The robber said, “You like looking that much?  You like looking at me so much?” Peter, all shocked and in a trance, said that he did, yes he did, very much, sir.


4.    Sandy owns a castle somewhere in Scandinavia.  A rich Danish couple with a barrelful of them swapped it for surrogate motherhood.


5.    Joel got facial reconstructive surgery.  He was tired of being so pretty.  This world had objectified him for far too long, he said.  Now, his face is like a better-looking Ringo Starr.  People follow him for autographs.


6.    Arthur owns the best wig shop in Nashville.


7.    Charlie bought a big, cheap plot of land in Minnesota and built a house with his own two hands.  His fifteen-year-old son helped, but I guess you could say those are his hands, too – Charlie took part in making them, didn’t he?  While he and his wife were out walking the dog, the house collapsed.  It was such a simple house, his son was easy to find in the rubble.


8.    Lisa – your first love, wasn’t she? – has three kids.  Three.  She named all of them after her three older brothers.  Even the daughter.  Now, she’s got a little girl named Benjamin.  A beautiful girl, cute as a slice of cake, named Benjamin.  Is that a hell sentence, or what?

9.    Will opened a chain of gas stations.  I tell you, he’s so stuffed with money, he sneezes gold coins.  You know what he does with all that cash?  Art collecting.  He collects sculptures and photos and paintings and tapestries, you name it, all showing women in moments of ecstasy.  Toes curled, heads back, mouths open, that sort of thing.  The sculptures are his favorites.  They say he’s got four rooms with just sculptures. 


10.    You?  You’ve been away too long.  They say you’ve got all the good stories, but none of them are true.

If I Am a House

    We lay on a stretch of grass.  The grass separates the highway traffic; at our feet, cars scurry from the city, toward the sun; at our heads, they rush toward the city, leaving the sun behind.  The grass is lush.  The highway sounds plunge over us.  A huffing orchestra.  Angry instruments.  Motion’s sounds are always ugly.  It’s too busy getting where and back and where to worry how its whining may affect us.
    We lay on the grass for pleasure, for relief.  We’ve been hiking the highways a long time, wandering this country’s veins in search of a search.  No one stops for us around here.  We’re raggedy; they’re cautious.  I tell you the taste of homelessness is flammable and dusty, full of chemicals.  You tell me I am a house.  If I am a house, where is the door?  If I am a house, which room is this poem?

TV Carnage Vs. Romance

Collage of Gmail/Facebook/AIM chats for 15 Sept 2008

12:09 AM
worbinuaa: i ditched you yesterday. apologies

11:07 PM
Allison: "my invitation to the blog has expired"
8 minutes

11:15 PM
Allison: can you send me another
10 minutes

11:26 PM
Allison: respondddd

pleassseeee

1:38 PM
joelveto: persist and sweat

some fantastic things take persistence and sweat

a blowjob in a bathroom, or the best_sex_ever?

ety, addressing the responsibility of said violence, and such.

12:53am
Adam
dont get me wrong. im charmed by his eastern european cartel lord speaking style.
he is a madman of theory.
i am more scared by his Lacanisms.
have you seen his modish DVD
12:55am
Paul
not yet. he speaks of it in his book. luckily i am not reading it for a class, so i can take it at my own pace. soon enough.
12:56am
Adam
i love a boy who reads for fun.
i wanted to wander more in theory in a phase of my life
but it got so heady
and the hidden classicist in me revolted
12:56am
Paul
its painful sometimes.
but through destruction, creation, non?
12:57am
Adam
and sometimes philo-lite because where is the rigor for the risk
through them what?
a binary couple?
12:58am
Paul
speaking of heady.
1:00am
Paul
haha. destruction of one's presuppositions about one's own rebellion against the ability to get painfully heady. the revolt of the academic for the sake of one's own need to adhere to the tangibly applicable. the destruction of those emotions, the creation of a deeper understaning.
understanding*
that is assuming that the theoretic understanding is in fact any sort of understanding at all.
1:02am
Paul
see? you've got me rambling.
no bueno, sir.
1:03am
Adam
I love rambling.
You can't out ramble a rambler.
The problem is
yes it's good to be liberated
from anything, regardless
1:04am
Paul
"liberated"
1:04am
Adam
yes it's good to burn down the library
and let memory wander like a drunk goose loose
but how about trading in one's bone marrow
how about auctioning off one's immune system
what about attacking the dilatory urinary processing of the kidneys
theory prefers then to pause
1:04am
Paul
like AIDS. giving it to the gods.
the homosexual anti-moral gods.
1:05am
Adam
ha. explain that one padre pio.
or did you watch Angels in America recently?
1:05am
Paul
stigmata.
haha.
not recently enough.

me: i didnt install a code yet

i will tonight or tomorrow
8:26 PM
everything looks great

talk to you soon!!

thanks again for everything john

this is going to be so much fun and its only the beginning

the forum could turn into such an amazing place to share, post, find out info, etc.

r1: ok well talk soon. yep i am sure. its very fun to have someone who is so open minded like you :)
8:27 PM
me: thats very sweet of you to say

r1: its true

we will do great
8:28 PM
ttyl bye

me: xoxo

bye

9:05 PM
wpac15: dude i got chills when the chairman of our firm addressed us today. he gave the opening remarks to our first year class on the morning of what he called one of the three worst days in the history of the u.s. financial markets.

all the partners that talked to us were huffing and puffing when they ran in and gave a speech to us here or there. you could tell they were doin real deal shit and we were an afterthought.
9:06 PM
but it was still like the coolest thing. looking around wall st everyone looked like they just watched a puppy get hit by a car or something man. it was so weird.

Sarah: Who is Henri Cole?

I got that email.

me: google him

one of the very best living younger (50yrsold) poets

he's very gay

very aesthete

very indulgent and yet emotionally Mandarin, like a Japanese geisha
7:48 PM
Sarah: Wow.

I could fall in love with him.

me: Harold Bloom approved to boot.

Sarah: Wow.

me: not to come to the festival, but I mean of HC

Sarah: That's all so wonderful!

Oh gotcha

me: Hb said no
7:49 PM
Sarah: Bummer.

Why?

me: nothing except

"I very much regret I will be unable to attend. Harold Bloom."
7:50 PM
Sarah: Bizarre

Okay I am in a meeting and should participate now.

Talk with you later this evening?
7:51 PM
me: Sounds good

I hope yer well

Sarah: I will chat with you later on, though. Meeting over in 2 hrs. or so.

Love,

S.

me: Beautiful. I come to Boston Thursday. xoxo

8:44 PM
ofardorandarbors: how do i put a youtube link on bodyparts?

me: on the youtube page
8:45 PM
click on embed link

copy

and paste that into HTML box

ofardorandarbors: ahh! thank you
8:46 PM
so simple. i'm not technologically advanced

or even good

me: isnt it see


Scott Cairns
September 15 at 8:29pm
Reply
Hey, zap me a note if you think you might want to be part of Summer Seminars in Greece, 2009 edition. We're in the midst of negotiating accommodations, and having a sense of how many folks will be involved will help us in our planning.

Be sure to alert your graduate students and selected (i.e., most accomplished) undergraduate students to our program.

Also, if not 2009, keep an eye on May, 2010 for Thessaloniki/Thassos and/or June, 2010 for Athens/Serifos!

Paul
that woman actress. her name is slipping me, however, she is the one who did bug porn.
1:18am
Adam
isabella
bug porn, really, tell me
isabella rosselini
1:18am
Paul
watch it. its porn, but she and actors dressed up as bugs, mating.
1:19am
Adam
get out
why watch women enacting bug porn
when i can just watch porn
1:20am
Paul
porn is found art.
1:21am
Paul
bug porn is art.
porn is found art.
1:21am
Adam
if those definitions are true
i think that puts me in the found art camp
3,405 videos to 0
1:22am
Paul
you watch porn alone, or with a friend.
1:22am
Adam
ive never watched porn with a friend
1:22am
Paul
bug porn is for small movie theatres with old men.
haha.
you never know.
1:22am
Adam
do others enjoy porn together
in the straight world of machismo combinations?
1:23am
Paul
or the lack of libido?

The Old Man's Dream

The time will come; we will breathe like
Whales, in panting intervals.
Between each exhale, we’ll fake
Remembrance.  On the walls

We’ll hang new windows.
The time will come; we’ll rest above
All thought of movement.  Then, free,

Like useless toys, we’ll laugh, lie still
As we watch the color
Wander from our bodies.
 and fill
This room – vaster, brighter. 

Elegy for Little I

Mourning is here now.
I invited her in to clear out

the rooms.  Now they are more
like space, less like containers. 

All boxes which leave this
room entomb you.  In exchange

for each, I rest
a starfish on the windowsill,

beside the mirror, under the bed –
we worship these corpses for their shapes. 

I tell you – I hear always
the sigh of peeling paint.

I cannot cover the last color you saw.
Look away; out the window, poppies parade

like small circus tents.
Flowers once were simply flowers!

Earth seems jabbed by them now.
Flowers like blood feathers

people my vision and I fear for them.
I am overwhelmed by the sense

that air will always stick to me,
by each moment that must crowd into

always.  I ask; who am I against
who you dreamed me? 

I pity these flowers, plucked
from nature’s circulation by human vision. 

Look away; these are the walls you last knew.
The wailing noises of highway lurch into the room.

The glorification of highways is ugly
like the sense that things must be mourned for

and that they should not be.  Out the windo;
this sun sets tombward, the sky rusts,

and there comes a vast forgetting.

Sing out of me from beyond the dead!
I have cleared out these rooms – the walls’

colors must remain, though they should not,
though they peel and mold. 

I tell you – this mourning
of the cradle mothers me.

To Paint the Portrait of a Bird

First paint a cage
with an open door
then paint
something pretty
something simple
something beautiful
something useful
for the bird
then place the canvas against a tree
in a garden
in a wood
or in a forest
hide behind the tree
without speaking
without moving...
Sometimes the bird comes quickly
but he can just as well spend long years
before deciding
Don't get discouraged
wait
wait years if necessary
the swiftness or slowness of the coming
of the bird having no rapport
with the success of the picture
When the bird comes
if he comes
observe the most profound silence
wait till the bird enters the cage
and when he has entered
gently close the door with a brush
then
paint out all the bars one by one
taking care not to touch any of the feathers of the bird
Then paint the portrait of the tree
choosing the most beautiful of its branches
for the bird
paint also the green foliage and the wind's freshness
the dust of the sun
and the noise of insects in the summer heat
and then wait for the bird to decide to sing
If the bird doesn't sing
it's a bad sign
a sign that the painting is bad
but if he sings it's a good sign
a sign that you can sign
so then so very gently you pull out
one of the feathers of the bird
and you write your name in a corner of the picture.

by Jacques Prévert
translated by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

DISSAPOINTMENT IN PARIS, or BAUDELAIRE’S 436th DREAM

In the center of the screen stands a woman next to a bench.  She wears a plum colored ball gown and a child’s superhero costume cape.  She digs inside her ear with a finger, complete concentration glazing her face.

Rain begins.

She leans her head back and opens her mouth.

Woman:  This rain doesn’t taste like wine!  I hop-scotched all the way across the continent because they said the rain would taste like wine.  [She begins to cry.  A plump tear slides down her cheek,  The tear transforms  into a jester.  She stops crying.]

Oh my, I’ve wept a jester.

Jester:          [performs a thirty second dance, trying to gain his balance.] I’ve climbed so many stairs just to find the door that leads outside your tear duct.  I’m out of breath and mighty dizzy!

Laugh track plays.