pith…

Strip malls give way to strip clubs
One hundred fifty miles grind
Alongside mammoth motor homes

The land is changing
She is more voluptuous
Her sins secreted

While in dusty towns
Proud old resentments
Bolted to bricks shout

“Get us out of the United Nations!”

Greasy truck-stop trading posts
Stand between bands of green
Separating coming and going—

Out on the highway
Blue semi driver plays your game
Trading slots and making up stories

Regarding stiff-armed drivers from Illinois

-   Kathleen Eull

There are four legends concerning Prometheus.

According to the first, he was clamped to a rock in the Caucasus for betraying the secrets of the gods to men, and the gods sent eagles to feed on his liver, which was permanently renewed.

According to the second, Prometheus, goaded by the pain of the tearing beaks, pressed himself deeper and deeper into the rock until he became one with it.

According to the third, his treachery was forgotten in the course of years, forgotten by gods, the eagles, forgotten by himself.

According to the fourth, everyone grew weary of the meaningless affair. The gods grew weary, the eagles grew weary, the wound closed wearily.

There remained the inexplicable mass of rock. The legend tried to explain the inexplicable. As it came out of a substratum of truth it had in turn to end in the inexplicable.

BURIEDFED

This is my last song about myself, about my friends
Found something else to sing
Try and patch it up with tape and twine
Maybe I’ll just break everything that’s mine

They wheeled out my casket,
They said, “Boy, lay down your head”
I said, “Aw shit, man, I ain’t even dead”
I won’t be buried for I’m…

My friend, who’s a real yo-yo
She’s always crying, and no one knows why
She’s gonna be alright
Lost her past in a fuzzy fire
Wasn’t even drunk, just a little tired last night

And they took her to the doctor
To fix her heart, and heal her head
She said, “Goddamn, I’m tired of being polite
Go save somebody else”

Friend of mine drank something fine,
Choked to death before his time, last night
He said, “I found that thing you really need”
Come on, you can’t breathe alright

Everyone’ll be there at the burial in your head
And a tear or two, they shed
Then they’re gonna go digging in your hole
And find someone else instead
Make someone else feel dead instead

Oh, he didn’t like people much at all
Tasted better with alcohol
You know how that one goes
He realized he’d missed his whole life
Kissed his dog and shot his wife last night

And they pulled him to a preacher
He said, “Pray ‘Our Father’ prayers”
He said, “Aw shit, man, I don’t even care
Oh, I ain’t did nothing”

Reckless ruin is killing high
A great, fine victory we’re still alive
My, my, what a surprise
I got home late, I don’t care
Better late than never, dear

They took her to the prison
Sat across from him, and sighed
She said, “Fuck you, I wanted just to die
How come you, baby boy, you
You can’t do a damn thing right
You can’t do any damn thing right”

This is my last song I write inside
Going out, find somewhere else to hide
Late at night on an empty street
Ain’t anyone I know walking beside me

I ain’t done a damn thing right
But oh, I’ll try, before I die
How ’bout tonight

They wheeled out my casket,
They said, “Boy, lay down your head”
I said, “Believe me, I wish that I was dead”
But as long as I’ve been running
While this world exploded in this big hole in my head

But as long as I’ve been running
Well, I might just keep it coming
To someone else instead

Oh, you, baby boy, you
You can’t do a damn thing right
You can’t do any damn thing right

.

- Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson, “Buriedfed” from Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson, 2008 debut album.

Soft stockings coddle them by day and nail-bossed leather shoes buttress them, but my toes refuse to pay attention. Nothing interests them but emitting toenails, horny plates, semi-transparent and elastic, to defend themselves–from whom? Stupid and mistrustful as they alone can be, they never for a moment stop readying that tenuous armament. They reject the universe and its ecstasy to keep forever elaborating sharp ends, which rude Solingen scissors snip over and over again. Ninety days along in the dawn of prenatal confinement, they establish that singular industry. When I am laid away, in an ash-colored house provided with dead flowers and amulets, they will still go on with their stubborn task, until they are moderated by decay. They -– and the beard on my face.

- Jorge Luis Borges
From Dreamtigers, translated by Mildred Boyer

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The lavender aroma of her apartment lends itself to musty carpet and stale cigarette smoke to the eventual car exhaust and bad food smells as she follows me out, heavy glass swinging shut behind her to the morning orchestra of traffic. Her short stature belies her Miss America gait. She is a scarved, lithe stack of fabric, beaming eyes and waking smile, She reaches for my hand, glowing in the new spectrum, dulling with adjustment. I am angry salt and olfaction. “I don’t wake up handholding.”

“It’s the culture, sweetie.”

“The woman was stoned to death! And for… ”

“People are idiots everywhere.” Her casual interruption lent her free hand to my arm.

I wasn’t disagreeing but that she would ever challenge my epistemology without putting her matter to the fire and find her metaphysics lacking… burned to a crisp in the morning chill, biting at her regalities.

As her digits enclosed my own, the amoeba of her cold grasp halts my own undoing as we race across the newly busy morning’s avenue.

“You know that’s not Islam, right?” she asks. She doesn’t plead. Ever. Meaning is meaning.

“I am not convinced.”

The car doors shut like two muted barks and it’s lavender again and she’s reaching again. She drives. Screaming, as she says I have taught her, at passersby, short buses and hipsters that dare to make the mad dash in front of this apparently raving Honda, across our outstretch of hard, cracked gray. She is adorable.

Her shoulders moving to the morning music and I am a captive of my own being. Aghast at the separation between her Monday and mine, agape with what normatives that cannot meet in the middle, we are again with the approved yelling and yuppies – a honk or two. We make our way into the furthering of April. Nothing green yet.

“You’d better run!” she screams, laughing wildly and looking to me for extraneous approval.

I can only nod. Smile.

- Gordon Bruce Solomon

Lucia, my distant love

You predict me, as ever. Yes, the woods again were where I found myself, wolves singing their hungry sleep songs, but returned to our home, a half empty shell of what we haven’t built, but abide there on our finest days. Fuel for my fires was depleted in days and another week of the dark, damp chill drove me back despite the loss of open cover. Happy to hear your Italian love swells still. You were right to seep away again to Venetian canals. Water becomes you. Flow as you must. If suave exotic love comes gliding in, don’t send it away. But, please, beware the sea. And fear the oarsmen, no more than failed sailors, who would lead you too near. Venice, you remember, was too sodden for me. Too much history, too much dream. Our own ride so clumsy. You, as ever, enduring disappointment, while I, half in, half, feared the swimmers and the moment. I miss you. And mean it. You’re a courtesan above me. I proffer the pedestrian. Release your corset. Return when you’re ready.

Your Jack

Dear Jack-Be-Nimble,

The sky is a particular gray-blue today, and it makes me think of you.  Your slate eyes.  Venice is, well, all masks and gondolas; I love and need it as I do my own internal organs that I picture crammed to fatal dimensions from a corset as if I were some courtesan fleeing the sacking of Rome to set up house on the water.  But this is a book I read, I think.  I am, indeed, drawn to the suspension of the place: the sheer possibility of falling or crashing from ground to saltwater canals and flowing into the Adriatic as golden-haired wreckage.  I wonder about you and where you are?  Staring into some dwindling camp fire, watching the embers smolder as orange particulars on tangled, gnarled roots used as kindling?  Are you in the fire, Jack, or are you stewing your own organs just outside of it?

Always Yours, 
Lucia, Your Venetian Courtesan                                                                                   

BEFORE THE LAW stands a doorkeeper. To this doorkeeper there comes a man from the country and prays for admittance to the Law. But the doorkeeper says that he cannot grant admittance at the moment. The man thinks it over and then asks if he will be allowed in later. “It is possible,” says the doorkeeper, “but not at the moment.” Since the gate stands open, as usual, and the doorkeeper steps to one side, the man stoops to peer through the gateway into the interior. Observing that, the doorkeeper laughs and says: “If you are so drawn to it, ‘just try to go in despite my veto. But take note: I am powerful. And I am only the least of the doorkeepers. From hall to hall there is one doorkeeper after another, each more powerful than the last. The third doorkeeper is already so terrible that even I cannot bear to look at him.” These are difficulties the man from the country has not expected; the Law, he thinks, should surely be accessible at all times and to everyone, but as he now takes a closer look at the doorkeeper in his fur coat, with his big sharp nose and long, thin, black Tartar beard, he decides that it is better to wait until he gets permission to enter. The doorkeeper gives him a stool and lets him sit down at one side of the door. There he sits for days and years. He makes many attempts to be admitted, and wearies the doorkeeper by his importunity. The doorkeeper frequently has little interviews with him, asking him questions about his home and many other things, but the questions are put indifferently, as great lords put them, and always finish with the statement that he cannot be let in yet. The man, who has furnished himself with many things for his journey, sacrifices all he has, however valuable, to bribe the doorkeeper. The doorkeeper accepts everything, but always with the remark: “I am only taking it to keep you from thinking you have omitted anything.” During these many years the man fixes his attention almost continuously on the doorkeeper. He forgets the other doorkeepers, and this first one seems to him the sole obstacle preventing access to the Law. He curses his bad luck, in his early years boldly and loudly; later, as he grows old, he only grumbles to himself. He becomes childish, and since in his yearlong contemplation of the doorkeeper he has come to know even the fleas in his fur collar, he begs the flea ‘ s as well to help him and to change the doorkeep er’s mind. At length his eyesight begins to fail, and he does not know whether the world is really darker or whether his eyes are only deceiving him. Yet in his darkness he is now aware of a radiance that streams inextinguishably from the gateway of the Law. Now he has not very long to live. Before he dies, all his experiences in these long years gather themselves in his head to one point, a question he has not yet asked the doorkeeper. He waves him nearer, since he can no longer raise his stiffening body. The doorkeeper has to bend low toward him, for the difference in height between them has altered much to the man’s disadvantage. “What do you want to know now?” asks the doorkeeper; “you are insatiable.” “Everyone strives to reach the Law,” says the man, “so how does it happen that for all these many years no one but myself has ever begged for admittance?” The doorkeeper recognizes that the man has reached his end, and, to let his failing senses catch the words, roars in his ear: “No one else could ever be admitted here, since this gate was made only for you. I am now going to shut it.”

.

Translated by Willa and Edwin Muir. Copyright © 1971, Schocken Books.

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A voice comes to one in the dark. Imagine.

To one on his back in the dark. This he can tell by the pressure on his hind parts and by how the dark changes when he shuts his eyes and again when he opens them again. Only a small part of what is said can be verified. As for example when’ he bears, You are on your back in the dark. Then he must acknowledge the truth of what is said. But by far the greater part of what is said cannot be verified. As for example when he hears, You first saw the light on such and such a day. Sometimes the two are combined as for example, You first saw the light on such and such a day and now you are on your back in the dark. A device perhaps from the incontrovertibility of the one to win credence for the other. That then is the proposition. To one on his back in the dark a voice tells of a past. With occasional allusion to a present and more rarely to a future as for example, You will end as you now are. And in another dark or in the same another devising it all for company. Quick leave him.

Use of the second person marks the voice. That of the third that cankerous other. Could he speak to and of whom the voice speaks there would be a first. But he cannot. He shall not. You cannot. You shall not.

Apart from the voice and the faint sound of his breath there is no sound. None at least that he can hear. This he can tell by the faint sound of his breath.

Though now even less than ever given to, wonder he cannot but sometimes wonder if it is indeed to and of him the voice is speaking. May not there be another with him in the dark to and of whom the voice is speaking? Is he not perhaps overhearing a communication not intended for him? If he is alone on his back in the dark why does the voice not say so? Why does it never say for example, You saw the light on such and such a day and now you are alone on your back in the dark? Why? Perhaps for no other reason than to kindle in his mind this faint uncertainty and embarrassment.

Your mind never active at any time is now even less than ever so. This is the type of assertion he does not question. You saw the light on such and such a day and your mind never active at any time is now even less than ever so. Yet a certain activity of mind however slight is a necessary adjunct of company. That is why the voice does not say You are on your back in the dark and have no mental activity of any kind. The voice alone is I company but not enough. Its effect on the hearer is a necessary complement. Were it only to kindle in his mind the state of faint uncertainty and embarrassment mentioned above. But company apart this effect is clearly necessary. For were he merely to hear the voice and it to have no more effect on him than speech in Bantu or in Erse then might it not as well cease? Unless its object be by mere sound to plague one in need of silence. Or of course unless as above surmised directed at an other.

A small boy you come out of Connolly’s Stores holding your mother by the hand. You turn right and advance in silence southward along the highway. After some hundred paces you head inland and broach the long steep homeward. You make ground in silence hand in hand through the warm still summer air. It is late afternoon and after some hundred paces the sun appears above the crest of the rise. Looking up at the blue sky and then at your mother’s face you break the silence asking her if it is not in reality much more distant than it appears. The sky that is. The blue sky. Receiving no answer you mentally reframe your question and some hundred paces later look up at her face again and ask her if it does not appear much less distant than in reality it is. For some reason you could never fathom this question must have angered her exceedingly. For she shook off your little hand and made you a cutting retort you have never forgotten.

If the voice is not speaking to him it must be speaking to another. So with what reason remains he reasons. To another of that other. Or of him. Or of another still. To another of that other or of him or of another still. To one on his back in the dark in any case. Of one on his back in the dark whether the same or another. So with what reason remains he reasons and reasons ill. For were the voice speaking not to him but to another then it must be of that other it is speaking and not of him or of another still. Since it speaks in the second person. Were it not of him to whom it is speaking speaking but of another it would not speak in the second person but in the third. For example, He first saw the light on such and such a day and now he I is on his back in the dark. It is clear therefore that if it is not to him the voice is, speaking but to another it is not of him either but of that other and none other to that other. So with what reason remains he reasons ill. In order to be company he must display a certain mental activity. But it need not be of a high order. Indeed it might be argued the lower the better. Up to a point. The lower the order of mental activity the better the company. Up to a point.

…

Another trait its repetitiousness. Repeatedly with only minor variants the same bygone. As if willing to him by this dint to make it his. To confess, yes I remember. Perhaps even to have a voice. To murmur, Yes I remember. What an addition to company that would be! A voice in the first person singular. Murmuring now and then, Yes I remember.

…

Another trait the flat tone. No life. Same flat tone at all times. For its affirmations. For its negations. For its interrogations. For its exclamations. For its imperations. Same flat tone. You were once. You were never. Were you ever? Oh never to have been! Be again. Same flat tone.

…

In another dark or in the same another devising it all for company. This at first sight seems clear. But as the eye dwells it grows obscure. Indeed the longer the eye dwells the obscurer it grows. Till the eye closes and feed from pore the mind inquires, What does this mean? What finally does this mean that at first sight semmed clear? Till it the mind too closes as it were. As the window might close of a dark empty room. The single window giving out on outer dark. Then nothing more. No. Unhappily no. Pangs of faint light and stirrings still. Unformulable gropings of the mind. Unstillable.

…

For why not? Why in another dark or in the same? And whose voice asking this? Who asks, whose voice asking this? And answers, His soever who devises it all. In the same dark as his creator or in another. For company. Who asks in the end, Who asks? And in the end answers as above? And adds long after to himself, Unless another still. Nowhere to be found. Nowhere to be sought. The unthinkable last of all. Unnamable. Last person. I. Quick leave him.

.

© 1980 by Samuel Beckett, Grove Press 1980.
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