pith…

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.

Nothing is quite as appalling as the choosy eater. A grey and white and yellow plate— well done mush, in essence, drives me to spasms. My patience blanches watching a young woman carefully pick every green pea from her tiny platter of airplane provisions. Once at a museum reception I watched a man take a bite of a blueberry. Picky is icky. I wanted to smack the chopsticks out of her hands. I wanted to slap the fruit out of his fingers.

*

Why does a dog yawn when nervous? Does the canine brain require extra oxygen to process anxiety? Then why does the human feel the need to stuff some food substance into his regurgitation route whenever a television isn’t nearby? Is it the same reason given for the human who cannot but fiddle incessantly with a piece of plastic wrapping when sitting in a crowded but otherwise quiet public place? I prefer dogs.

*

Who was it allowed the man who sneezes and coughs without covering his mouth to continue living? That mother and father should be shot by a thorough-going firing squad. Shot until dead, shot until the dirty germs of snots and spits, snivels and snorts no longer hinder the sweet, silent, innocent air around him. Which begs the question— how long till an idiot’s diseases die? How long after the dumb-shit goes does his blood cease its efficacy in sickness?

*

How can the public announcement voice in an Asian airport requesting the presence of a dozen American passengers at the desk of the departing gate never have spoken a word of English in her life? Is it somehow a pre-requisite that the entire universe be so inconsiderate? When one is American, one thinks it’s just Americans who are idiots until he crosses a border. Any border, any time. We are not alone.

*

Any human activity requiring a ticket automatically shaves off half of the bearer’s intelligence quotient. PhD’s disappear into thin air. Watch a seasoned, well-traveled, well-dressed man board an airplane, for instance. Once he’s licked the sickening syrup of anticipation from his sweaty face and stuffs the nearest dead animal into his gaping maw, he’ll drift toward sleep and snore all the way to Detroit, Phoenix, Dallas, Anchorage— burping his dreams in his only bliss.

*

Excluding present company (I’m alone), one isn’t particularly concerned with education, lest he call the smallest human decency, the sparest courtesy and dignity, the basest etiquette or the simplest animal shame an education. Cross your enormous legs you fat, stupid fuck and tuck that pudding-stained sweatshirt into your thread-barest sweatpants. You’re in public now; you should have left your diaper-wear at home today.

*

There is something to be said for the human being who understands how to carry himself in the public world. To wit— when you are walking in a crowded, narrow passage, don’t stop stock still. Step aside, and turn your head and then your body around and away to look for or at whatever you’re looking for or at. If you are passing in heavy traffic, don’t slow down. If human beings were automobiles we’d all be dead. Then animals would reign again and murder would be crucial to survival. The world could eat its own annoyance.

*

The poor soul borne of a moron becomes another moron. This is not advocacy for murder or cannibalism (mind you, the Lord knows we have enough to eat if simultaneously thrifty and generous)— but if horses are glue and frogs become ink, can’t we find a way to make idiots into bullets? Can’t we find a double-duty, fool-proof way to protect ourselves from ourselves?

*

It seems all Americans in the airport are military today. Nothing against them— they too need to feed their spawn with the dead by killing sanctioned from on high. They will grow fat as saints, healthy as basketball billionaires. Someone strong needs to protect us from China when they come calling for payback.

*

No, really, we revel in eyeballing your extra 60 pounds of belly fat as you take up five seats for a nap at the overcrowded airport gate. We understand your sleep is needy, both beauty and brain, we’re tired too, but it must be exhausting for you eating that many inhuman meals in a single day. Please, snore a little bit harder for us, we can’t hear you clearly enough, can’t smell your rancid breath on our ways to Los Angeles, Stockton and Guam.

*

Women are more important than men. In Tokyo— no cows, no fruit, no dirt and the old cigarettes teach the new cigarettes about flowers. In Seoul traffic cops wear helmets for good reason. I’ve never been to Norway, but when their sneeze is a Snorri Sturluson. We are told it is America’s fault for the globe’s demise. Until we witness a Lithuanian king drive through his reckless, crooked night, or a Mexican president sink like a shit-sack, or watch the Chinese learn how to drive. The world devours itself like the ancient symbolic snake— spineless, unaware and unscrupulous.

*

One who gets wise by way of Schlitz and macaroni and cheese can easily grow accustomed to comet vintage Veuve Clicquot and crepes galettes. Why does it not work backwards? The stronger specimen, accustomed to shark’s fin soup, cannot, somehow, get used to a sardine tin. The weak link tortures the high priest with his incompetence. The strong sort tortures the weakling by way of the temper’s tribulations.

*

Pity the unpardonable sot who can’t sit still for more than a minute with only his thoughts, the poor, tortured troglodyte who must fuss with the vacancy in his overhead compartment for fear of the shifting contents within. The unforgivable cluck with no peace in his naked soul, no parcel of understanding of the joy of difference, unaware as we prepare for our initial descent. I am not an angry man. Brace for impact. We are all exactly the same. Everybody’s empire is empty.

Oxygen and bronze—
A father’s lilac hideout
(Cloud hammer hideaway)
(Spade on the table)

Not far away enough
For oblivion, too close
For obscurity— basement
Full of paper— upstairs

Full of babies— two elemental
Beauties by blood and egress
By cardinal and garden—
Harbored and freed

With the finches
That nibble
Your backyard
Bare.

15 May 2008

GRISAILLE AND SANGUINE

 

 

White horses of advertisements, or so—

How quickly our habits pass backward—

 

A lucky strike, an arrow central

Or a ball spinning proper to the pin—

 

This paper punches, the black on white

With splash of red for memory—

 

Every recollection of death

And every contention with the present—

 

When we’re certain you’re still alive.

.

© Scott Zieher

Scott Zieher

A HISTORY POEM

Inside this? A ballade for the popinjay—

Inside this a ballade of her blue china—

His blue of an enphebe prince-ling, bulls and mountains

And her white of froth and fountains in a park

Where peach blossoms grow

As a bookseller baits his breath for April—

And the princess wouldn’t shed a tear for his swift dismissal.

The poor man is fearful and forgettable.

He waits, making sure she hasn’t ignored him.

Chilly and dripping, with a porcelain moral

And her heart is rubber anyway—

Unbreakable if it exists at all.

So she pulled away from the small water—

The towels crushed her shoulders

Under lissome shadows of white mountains

That touched her ankles at the rapid bath—

(Contrapposto’s ill effects on the cuckhold.)

I was uxorious. Isn’t she the ship, her head proud

As a prow gone down slow in a room of gracelessness—

From the internal oblique to the toes?

The wind wipes her neck and rotten cheek.

Whatever is there in her fluttering hair

The curse compels.

Ticklish and thin from crinoline and mint

Those locks ungathered and untamed as wind—

They wipe her neck and rotten cheek again

Though diminished in swift extremity, still extant:

On point she puts me in, our tongues were numb

She rendered me hindered and dumb

Like steam she made me rise off

The witless weather and come back quickly—

Foam tethered fast to a thin tree.

And just as florid I am woozy and tired

From the drunken bustle I alone desired…

The chisel drifted, carving her throat to drink.

Rendered her in mid-air and light, distinct.

Here is the blush and sward, the clang

Of hammers and clang of the forge, the armor

Of her word— a nocturne’s worth, a sorry alto

In sandy wind, an expiring grotto of sea.

Because she did not step but rather lit

Upon each pad— so paused in mathematic pattern

(And geometrically dismissed the same).

Simple, but for the spray of hair that sways

To and fro and stops— her turns intended

The music is bellowing cadenza full of bowings and slaps

These blowsy money notes—

Sachet and stroke

Spin a delirious twist and I stand by

From the thistles and bushes, the darkling thrushes

(And all the little insects at her feet)…

Anima is the wind against me now as clouds endow

Other clouds with a flourish to and fro, drapery

All around her like folly twists around a graven tale

Unraveled. Grown dim with snow and dangerous—

I couldn’t know I was in for her deeper textures

Like a chestnut shell or the nectarskinny sea’s translucence.

Waveless

I am absinthe-minded with my swollen musket.

I held her whole through blue glass. I gripped my hale

Palm forward, without one bone mote of a moment—

She gripped me back.

I fell asleep while she walked away smooth and curious

Hands running along empty drumlins—

A bubble moving through her blood.

I misunderstood the middle throat of her stupid song.

I saw her from three trees deep—

Her eyes rimmed with hurried aplomb.

All thanatopsy-turvy as lace on the agate gates—

While a wind lifted her exquisite veil—

Like a breath from the flapping of devils tails.

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The laundromat leaves make a wicked tornado

The magazines yawp out their Holy Toledo!

I reach around in the fish’s mouth

Through ideopathic nostrils and yank

The hot rock from its nest.