pith…

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.

BEFORE THE GAME

Shut one eye then the other
Peek into every corner of yourself
See that there are no nails no thieves
See that there are cuckoo’s eggs

Shut then the other eye
Squat and jump
Jump jump high high
On top of yourself

Fall then with all your weight
Fall for days on end deep deep deep
To the bottom of your abyss
Who doesn’t break into pieces
Who remains whole who gets up whole
Plays

.

Vasko Popa, translated by Charles Simic. From Homage to the Lame Wolf: Selected Poems, Oberlin College Press; Revised and Expanded Ed edition (December 1987).

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

BUY THE BOOK: Dreamtigers (Texas Pan American Series)

There was no one in him; behind his face (which even through the bad paintings of those times resembles no other) and his words, which were copious, fantastic and stormy, there was only a bit of coldness, a dream dreamt by no one. At first he thought that all people were like him, but the astonishment of a friend to whom he had begun to speak of this emptiness showed him his error and made him feel always that an individual should not differ in outward appearance. Once he thought that in books he would find a cure for his ill and thus he learned the small Latin and less Greek a contemporary would speak of; later he considered that what he sought might well be found in an elemental rite of humanity, and let himself be initiated by Anne Hathaway one long June afternoon. At the age of twenty-odd years he went to London. Instinctively he had already become proficient in the habit of simulating that he was someone, so that others would not discover his condition as no one; in London he found the profession to which he was predestined, that of the actor, who on a stage plays at being another before a gathering of people who play at taking him for that other person. His histrionic tasks brought him a singular satisfaction, perhaps the first he had ever known; but once -the last verse had been acclaimed and the last dead man withdrawn from the stage, the hated flavour of unreality returned to him. He ceased to be Ferrex or Tamberlane and became no one again. Thus hounded, he took to imagining other heroes and other tragic fables. And so, while his flesh fulfilled its destiny as flesh in the taverns and brothels of London, the soul that inhabited him was Caesar, who disregards the augur’s admonition, and Juliet. who abhors the lark, and Macbeth, who converses on the plain with the witches who are also Fates. No one has ever been so many men as this man who like the Egyptian Proteus could exhaust all the guises of reality. At times he would leave a confession hidden away in some corner of his work, certain that it would not be deciphered; Richard affirms that in his person he plays the part of many and Iago claims with curious words ‘I am not what I am’. The fundamental identity of existing, dreaming and acting inspired famous passages of his.

For twenty years he persisted in that controlled hallucination, but one morning he was suddenly gripped by the tedium and the terror of being so many kings who die by the sword and so many suffering lovers who converge, diverge and melodiously expire. That very day he arranged to sell his theatre. Within.. a week he had returned to his native village, where he recovered the trees and rivers of his childhood and did not relate them to the others his muse had celebrated, illustrious with mythological allusions and Latin terms. He had to be ‘someone: he was a retired impresario who had made his fortune and concerned himself with loans, lawsuits and petty usury. It was in this character that he dictated the arid will and testament known to us, from which he deliberately excluded all traces of pathos or literature. His friends from London would visit his retreat and for them he would take up again his role as poet.

History adds that before or after dying he found himself in the presence of God and told Him: ‘I who have been so many men in vain want to be one and myself.’ The voice of the Lord answered from a whirlwind: ‘Neither am I anyone; I have dreamt the world as you dreamt your work, my Shakespeare, and among the forms in my dream are you, who like myself are many and no one.’

Jorge Luis Borges, from Labyrinths: Selected Stories & Other Writings (New Directions Paperbook)

Borges, Labyrinthes

High Windows

When I see a couple of kids
And guess he’s fucking her and she’s
Taking pills or wearing a diaphragm,
I know this is paradise

Everyone old has dreamed of all their lives–
Bonds and gestures pushed to one side
Like an outdated combine harvester,
And everyone young going down the long slide

To happiness, endlessly. I wonder if
Anyone looked at me, forty years back,
And thought, That’ll be the life;
No God any more, or sweating in the dark

About hell and that, or having to hide
What you think of the priest. He
And his lot will all go down the long slide
Like free bloody birds. And immediately

Rather than words comes the thought of high windows:
The sun-comprehending glass,
And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows
Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.

Philip Larkin

Philip Larkin, Collected Poems

A piece of a man had broken off in a road. He picked it up and put it in his pocket.

As he stooped to pick up another piece he came apart at the waist.

His bottom half was still standing. He walked over on his elbows and grabbed the seat of his pants and said, legs go home.

But as they were going along his head fell off. His head yelled, legs stop.

And then one of his knees came apart. But meanwhile his heart had dropped out of his trunk.

As his head screamed, legs turn around, his tongue fell out.

Oh my God, he thought, I’ll never get home.

From The Tunnel: Selected Poems

© Russell Edson, 1973. From The Tunnel: Selected Poems of Russell Edson, Oberlin College Press, 1994.

Oh didn’t we dance a puzzle
Round the tree when we
Danced the way we did
In early April when all is
Vernal and we needed twigs to
Invoke the gods that hovered
Near a healthy sprig
About a foot or so longer
Than needed to produce an
Invocation that requires wood
Or a cross of sticks so brittle
Not sought by dancing
Under the tree that provides
Sustenance and spirits
In a silly game of faith.
Now and always— once we
Got the air’s great laxity under us
Wending through branches bending
Over the dancing bodies spending
Our every energy in timeless total.
Didn’t our puzzle work up an ire
Among the weather’s eager attitudes
Never touched with darkness until
Danger marked the divination?
Till then it was a merriment we cut
Round each and every arbor
Every single dripping digit in
Each tortured orchard we could find
Behind our distant history—
Recollected behind a roaring, rapid—
Naked, blatant blanket of mistakes
Not ever recognized by teller or by told.
Consider the story supple gold—
However unbelievable, however ill-begot—
Each mystery is a gloried hardship, each
Song a found invention, hard to teach.

Hell

“If you want to understand the social and political history of modern man, study hell.” – Thomas Merton

It’s probably like the excitement of your first cigarette, but it lasts forever, that dizzying nausea — the Unknown: with imitation human heads on their buttocks, bats leaping from black books, dragon tails waving, monkey glands everywhere, hope dying slowly like a bad marriage, “I am nobody” the only conversation.

But then again the damned might be as unrecognizable and stupid as the living: men who use the same condom twice, women who let them, the degenerate who molested Spider-Man — everyone perpetually suing each other, holding hands in a circle whose rim clangs like a counterfeit coin.

But more likely it’s the general humiliation of being dead, realizing your own personal Beelzebub might be the least weird guy you know.

.
© 1997 by Peter Johnson.
from Pretty Happy! White Pine Press, New York, 1997.

Once upon a time there was an error
So ridiculous so minute
No one could have paid attention to it

It couldn’t stand
To see or hear itself

It made up all sorts of nonsense
Just to prove
That it really didn’t exist

It imagined a space
To fit all its proofs in
And time to guard its proofs
And the world to witness them

All that it imagined
Was not so ridiculous
Or so minute
But was of course in error

Was anything else possible

“Proud Error” from Homage to the Lame Wolf by Vasko Popa, translated by Charles Simic, 1987, Oberlin College Press. Copyright © 1987, Oberlin College Press.

Buy this great book:
Vasko Popa, Homage to the Lame Wolf, trans. Charles Simic

Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so. After
all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns, we
ourselves flash and yearn, and moreover my mother
told me as a boy (repeatingly) ‘Ever to confess
you’re bored means you have no

Inner Resources.’ I conclude now I have no inner
resources, because I am heavy bored. Peoples bore
me, literature bores me, especially great literature,
Henry bores me, with his plights & gripes as bad as
achilles,

who loves people and valiant art, which bores me. And
the tranquil hills, & gin, look like a drag and somehow a
dog has taken itself & its tail considerably away into
mountains or sea or sky, leaving behind:
me, wag.

Copyright © 1962 by John Berryman.
The Dream Songs, 1990, Farrar Straus Giroux.
Buy this book, dammit.

Ape

You haven’t finished your ape, said mother to father, who had monkey hair and blood on his whiskers.

I’ve had enough monkey, cried father.

You didn’t eat the hands, and I went to all the trouble to make onion rings for its fingers, said mother.

I’ll just nibble on its forehead, and then I’ve had enough, said father.

I stuffed its nose with garlic, just like you like it, said mother.

Why don’t you have the butcher cut these apes up? You lay the whole thing on the table every night; the same fractured skull, the same singed fur; like someone who died horribly. These aren’t dinners, these are postmortem dissections.

Try a piece of its gum, I’ve stuffed its mouth with bread, said mother.

Ugh, it looks like a mouth full of vomit. How can I bite into its cheek with bread spilling out of its mouth? cried father.

Break one of the ears off, they’re so crispy, said mother.

I wish to hell you’d put underpants on these apes; even a jockstrap, screamed father.

Father, how dare you insinuate that I see the ape as anything more than simple meat, screamed mother.

Well, what’s with this ribbon tied in a bow on its privates? screamed father.

Are you saying that I am in love with this vicious creature? That I would submit my female opening to this brute? That after we had love on the kitchen floor I would put him in the oven, after breaking his head with a frying pan; and then serve him to my husband, that my husband might eat the evidence of my infidelity … ?

From The Tunnel: Selected Poems. Copyright © 1994 by Russell Edson. Reproduced by permission of Oberlin College Press. May not be reproduced without express permission of Oberlin College Press.

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.

Buy Franz Kafka, The Complete Stories

It is not a way of life that a wise man proposes, but a way around life.

*

You say nothing could be further from the truth. I say nothing could be further than truth.

*

Sophistry is what reason becomes when it is employed for the purpose of reconciling us to life.

*

So much havoc has optimism wrought in this world that pessimism appears not only a legitimate way of looking at things but a moral duty.

*

In a fallen world no fear is unwarranted, and hence what the psychologist calls a phobia might more accurately be described as practical intelligence . . . The more things a man has the good sense to flee from, the less he will have to regret.

*

The true difference between the compassionate person and the coldhearted one is that the former derives pleasure form the suffering of other while the latter does not.

*

Inexcusable and unforgivable — two adjectives that may be applied to every living thing.

*

Pessimism is the optimism of disaster — the undying hope of every dreaded outcome.

*

It is not common sense but mental confusion that induces us to distinguish between those bent on utterly destroying us and those who have our best interest at heart.

*

© Christopher Spranger, Green Integer Books, Copenhagen 1998.

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.
BUY THE BOOK

Up in the pent apartment,
scarcely a story
away from an incidental
street, flush from another
neighborhood murder, at odds again
with the alleged moon. Hungry
but out of the essential soup, so walking
the way of all flesh
to the quick mart for coffee and reports in Arabic.
A targeted buyer of bottles and noodles
and improved antacids, protected from little
in frayed tan shoes, attempting to edit
the insistent images, ever attendant
at the private screening,
portable, and wired
for cable. A concocted frenzy
of thin humor and wide desire
soaking in the predicted downpour, heading nobody
nor their errant horse, off
at the heroic pass (though the western reruns
again at eleven). Alone
but not anonymous and never wholly
unaccompanied in the intentional city.
Preempting, weekly, the final arrangements
for what gathered ancestors could suppose by name.

.

In fits
and bursts
in electric
magnetic outbursts
from under the varnished door.
This is the way the world comes in.

.

Yet another era among many. Don’t bother
to coin it. This is not a wanton garden
and we are hardly our own origins, nor am I
some woozy oracle in an enigmatic state
perched atop a tripod above the vaporous stink
whipping up a riddle in a piss-soaked bowl.
And no goat left that trail reeking down the hallway.

.

Fluids in
and fluids
out, fumbling
for the keys
and dripping on
the landing.
A blooded addendum
to what
but this
liquid and dubious
process, an excess
again home
on rented premises,
to absorb
the news unfiltered,
to inherit
a settled territory
in an overcrowded chair.

.

I call you on the cordless and wonder
out loud if you could fix what’s broken
and stuck to my bed. You yawn and name it
me again but still you come and we eat what’s in.
We’re happy to finish the other’s sentence
and repeat our stories at parties together.
Introductory dinners require toothpicks
and napkins cribbed with witty quips.

.

No. Didn’t know him.
Just lived in the building.
Talked to the painter though.
Splattered him all over his own damn kitchen.
LAST CALL PEOPLE.
Like a Jackson Pollock.
Lost half-a-day scrapin’ those brains off the walls.
Like a pot roast exploded.
Just painted over the littlest pieces.
NO MORE POOL.
Said he hopes they call him ‘fore it dries next time.
Said psychics oughta quit reading cards.
Future’s in the brains.
NO MORE MONEY IN THE JUKE BOX.
Wants to start his own business
DRINK UP PEOPLE.
paintin’ crime scenes.
Gotta specialize these days.
YOU’RE OUTTA HERE.
Gotta look ahead.

.

There is only water here,
Possum. No shadow
to speak of
and no rock
as far as anyone
remembers. Unreal,
maybe. But every city
implies its opposite
and there are no yeomen here
in frontier blue overalls
raising corn
or the dead.

.

Dark matter hums past us from the background:
the matter mostly missing, the dark guessed
at by the gravity of what is damn near there.

.

No matter, no sense
of an ending
left on the seat
in medias rebus
but senses
nonetheless
riding in the rolling advertisement
to the temporary agency
to impress the director
of human resources. Hanging
from the towel dispenser may result
in death or serious injury.

.

We would rescue the tanked lobster
in our annual restaurant, feeling
his way along the clear walls, pointing
at us and every other seated hunger.
He’s not picky, he’s cooked. He’s history
balling up in its own stiff juices, saucy as a tomcat
tossed in hellwater. We learn to maneuver
from the Heimlich poster and are glad
to be extras on this elaborate set, waving ferns
for the maker, our favorite auteur filming Egypt
from a boom truck, parting the waters in a cracked bathtub.

.

I tell myself
I say I am
not and never
have been too
cruel. The webcam
is the corollary
of the medieval
conscience. I try
to leave a note
of an absence
in the hefty blue
book. Nothing
goes unpublished.
No one is unaired.

.

The water is stirred in squat pools
beside the Great Lake, washed through
crushed cinders, piped beneath the real
estate, bottled and labled in corrupt
or bent French. Spring rains season us
to taste. E. Coli is not the loan officer
who rejected your brother last winter.

.

Dark matter hums past us from the background:
the matter mostly missing, the dark guessed
at by the gravity of what is damn near there.

.

No icons, no thank you,
no skin on our chicken,
no skeletal creed
upon which to drape
the meat of our days.
The waiter comes
when we can afford him
to tell us his name, to pour
more water and to show us
his bones. He’s a waiter
and he knows it. We’re not sure
if we’re dressed or wearing out
our welcome in magenta, red or fucshia.

.

I’ve no faith in the tides
but cup my hands at the ocean
to watch it seep through my cracks.
What washes to shore might
need a box or something like a vision.
Do not fear sailors (though
they’re awfully wicked dealers), fear
the seas they grow sick from.
Suppose no future. Don’t think
next year your odds for the Lotto
will be better. And don’t stare.

.

Mister Charon, he left.
Got a view and two acres. Polishes his Saab
every obvious Sunday. Sells health insurance.
Panhandlers demand more than quarters today.
The air’s full of strangers
in rare communion. Those ashes
on the laquered mantle? Your mother’s
And a dozen others. The undertaker got a subcontractor.
One clean-burning kiln for all.
We know better than to snicker
at the sadly-cramped democracy in the faux-golden urn.

.

In fits
and bursts
in electric
magnetic outbursts
from under the varnished door.
This is the way the world comes in.

.

Drowning without a buoy to wave from or wash broken up
on and no wet floe to stand on or slide from
and no rock, no rock to cover
a delusion or two. Drowning birds on a nature show of
an African river. A river is complicit
in all that I know and I know it
all runs together, runs through the room, any room
will do. Drowning according to the ceremonies of shock
that cannot hide the ensured lack
of shadow or the fact that nothing (save maybe
death en masse and/or ex post facto)
shocks. Drowned sailors take no shore leave.

.

A night out
for its walking.
Thank you for asking.
A healthy dollop of what the fuck
chucked off the rooftop. An aimless slick
of disjecta purged along the pavement.
A puddle of goo behind the hatted statue.
I’ve never been to a better Weltschmertz.
The singing was exciting in any Asian language
and the costumes almost blinding.
Goodnight. Say cher.
Tres cher. Now,
with your eyes.

.

Charged with nothing
but what comes in
so far, and what comes in
will not sit down
but finds a way
to somehow stay.
No deadlines, yet feeling
something of an editor
gnawing down on all
eight fingers, spilling
the milk before reaching
the cup, burning up
the plants and watering
a zapped dinner, craving
something, anything
almost as stable as iron
(what the universe yearns for)
to save in a jar
or condemn with a fury
akin to conviction,
tuning in to the channel
predicting this millenium
will not be comic, locking
the door, the way the world
comes in.

.

- joesmith

© joesmith, 2007

“The more injured you are by time, the more you seek to escape it. To write a faultless page, or only a sentence, raises you above becoming and its corruptions. You transcend death by the pursuit of the indestructible in speech….”

- E.M. Cioran, The Trouble with Being Born, tr. Richard Howard. © Arcade Publishing, 1998.

The Man Rock

A man is a rock in a garden of chairs and waits a longtime to be over.

It is easier for a rock in a garden than a man inside his mother. He decided to be a rock when he got outside.

A rock asks only what is a rock.

A rock waits to be a rock.

A rock is a longtime waiting for a longtime to be over so that it may turn and go the other way.

A rock awakens into a man. A man looks. A man sleeps back into a rock as it is better for a rock in a garden than a man inside himself trembling in red darkness.


From The Tunnel: Selected Poems. Copyright © 1994 by Russell Edson. Reproduced by permission of Oberlin College Press. May not be reproduced without express permission of Oberlin College Press.

.

CHRISTMAS AT THE ORPHANAGE

But if they’d give us toys and twice the stuff most
parents splurge on the average kid, orphans, I submit, need more than enough;
in fact, stacks wrapped with our names nearly hid
the tree: these sparkling allotments yearly
guaranteed a lack of–what?–family?–
I knew exactly what it was I missed as we were lined up number rank and file:
to share my pals’ tearing open their piles
meant sealing the self, the child that wanted
to scream at all You stole those gifts from me;
whose birthday is worth such words? The wish-lists
they’d made us write out in May lay granted
against starred branches. I said I’m sorry.

.
.
.

2 FUTILISTS

Even if the mountain I climbed
Proved to be merely a duncecap It
was only on gaining its peak
That that knowledge reached me.

Is there a single inch–
one square millimeter
on the face of our planet
which some animal
human or otherwise
has not shit on?

Is there anywhere even a
pore’s-worth of ground–
earth that has never
(not once in its eons)
been covered by what
golgotha of dung?

If such a place exists,
I want to go there
and stand there
at that site
in that spot, truly
and purely for an instant.

.
.
.

THE HUNGER

If a path to the Gingerbread House
could be established by breaking crumbs
off its edifice and sprinkling them
so as to find what lies behind us

across the featureless fairytale
void of childhood: yet how very quick
that trick wears out when the story’s track
takes hold, takes toll, a far-older trail

prevails, we’re forced to give up this lost
cause; and the fact is that every last
morsel was gone long before the you

or I might totter our way back here
to try to dissuade all these other
Hansel-Gretels hollering in queue.
.
.
.

STRESS THERAPY

Time, time, time, time, the clock
vaccinates us.
and then even that lacks
prophylaxis.

Ticktock-pockmarked, stricken
by such strokes, we
get sick of prescriptions
which work solely

on the body.
Systole diastole–
It is by its very

intermittency
that the heart knows
itself to be an I.

.

© 1995 by Bill Knott
from
The Quicken Tree, BOA Editions Ltd. Reproduced by permission. May not be reproduced without permission.

FEEDING THE SUN

One day we notice that the sun
needs feeding. Immediately
a crash program begins: we fill rockets
with wheat, smoke-rings, razorblades, then,
after long aiming
–they’re off. Hulls specially alloyed
so as not to melt before the stuff
gets delivered we pour cattle rivers windmills,
aborigines etcet into the sun which
however, grows stubbornly
smaller, paler. Finally
of course we run out of things to feed the thing,
start shipping ourselves. By now
all the planets-moons-asteroids and
so on have been shoveled in though they’re
not doing much good it’s
still looking pretty weak, heck, nothing helps!
Now the last few of us left lift off.
The trip seems forever but then, touchdown.
Just before entering we wonder,
will we be enough. There’s
a last-second doubt in our minds: can we,
can this final sacrifice, our broughten crumb,
satiate
it–will a glutteral belch burst out then at last,–
and will that Big Burp be seen by far-off telescopes,
interpreted as a nova
by those other galaxies,
those further stars which have always seemed even more
starving
than ours?

:

THE ENEMY

Like everyone I demand to be
Defended unto the death of
All who defend me, all the
World’s people I command to
Roundabout me shield me, to
Fight off the enemy. The
Theory is if they all stand
Banded together and wall me
Safe, there’s no one left to
Be the enemy. Unless I of
Course start attack, snap-
Ping and shattering my hands
On your invincible backs.

:

OBSOLESCENT

Bending over like this to get my hands empty
Rummaging through the white trashcans out back
Of the Patent Office I find a kind of peace
Here in this warm-lit alley where no one comes.

Even the rats too they know that nothing new
Is going to get pitched out now–no formula,
Not one blueprint will ever be found in these
Bright bins whose futures are huge, pristine.

Old alleymouth grabbags my attention at times
I see the world flash by out there, glow-glow as
The floors of decontamination chambers-

I go back to my dull, boring search, foraging
For the feel it gives me of the thing which has
Invented me: that void whose sole idea I was.

:

LESSON

Our love has chosen its appropriate gesture
Which when viewed in the midst of all the gestures
It didn’t choose seems almost insignificant.

The gesture our love has chosen is appropriate
We both agree not that we have any choice but
Amidst all those others does seem insignificant.

Is it incumbent on us thus to therefore obliterate
All of the gestures except this insignificant one
Chosen by our love for its own no doubt reasons.

It is up to us to obliterate all other gestures
Though they cluster round thick as presentations
Of war and sacrifice in a gradeschool classroom.

Use of our love’s chosen gesture for the obliteration
Of all those foreign gestures is forbidden however
We must find something else to erase them with.

Our love has chosen its appropriate gesture
Which when viewed in the absence of all other gestures
Seems to spell the opposite of insignificant.

© 1979, 1981, 1982, 1983 by Bill Knott. From
Becos, Vintage Books, 1983.

The Family Monkey

We bought an electric monkey, experimenting rather recklessly with funds carefully gathered since grandfather’s time for the purchase of a steam monkey.

We had either, by this time, the choice of an electric or gas monkey.

The steam monkey is no longer being made, said the monkey merchant.

But the family always planned on a steam monkey.

Well, said the monkey merchant, just as the wind-up monkey gave way to the steam monkey, the steam monkey has given way to the gas and electric monkeys.

Is that like the grandfather clock being replaced by the grandchild clock?

Sort of, said the monkey merchant.

So we bought the electric monkey, and plugged its umbilical cord into the wall.

The smoke coming out of its fur told us something was wrong.

We had electrocuted the family monkey.

.

Copyright © 1994 by Russell Edson. Reproduced by permission of Oberlin College Press. May not be reproduced without express permission of Oberlin College Press.