Essay on the Poem as Gift

It seems natural to think that the poet gives their poem to the reader as a gift. The poem connects with the reader by giving them something of worth through the poem – enjoyment, hilarity, poignancy, a life message. The reader receives the poetic gift – finds it in their Facebook feed, for example – and likes or even loves it, and maybe comments appreciatively in the thread, giving the poet the crucial sense that the reader has been touched.

There’s no reason to belittle this nice view of the poetic exchange, except for one thing, which all poets acknowledge: readers are not anxious to read the poems that poets generously make available. Readers mostly ignore them – except, interestingly, for a few readers, also poets, for whom the poet has performed the generous and somewhat onerous service of reading and responding to their poems – or at least some of them.

I want to say that it's not so much that the poem is the poet's gift to the reader (the reader didn’t ask for it and doesn’t want to stop what they’re doing to read it), as that reading the poem is the reader’s gift to the poet. The poem is a gift mainly in giving the reader the opportunity to give the poet the gift of reading the poem.

The poet might say that they did everything they could to figure out what the reader wants and enjoys and will find valuable. The poet wasn’t writing onanistically for self-enjoyment, but was always solicitous of the reader, knowing the reader’s wants and needs and fulfilling them generously and selflessly. But the poet’s assumption of knowing what the reader needs is actually a bit of an affront to the reader. How do we feel when a stranger or even a friend claims to know what we want and need? We feel that our space has been violated and that someone is exercising power over us. The poem as gift affronts both our sense of self-worth and our desire to be left alone. How dare the poet presume to know what I need, and then intrude on my time and privacy? I believe that this is why nearly all potential readers ignore the poem and refuse the poetic gift, unless the poet has created an obligation in them by reading their poems.

The poem, to repeat, is a gift mainly in that it gives the reader the opportunity to give the poet the gift of reading the poem. For the reader, it’s an opportunity to experience the pleasure of recuperating the poem (but, of course, the reader doesn't know at first that the experience will be pleasurable; in any case, the pleasure may require a lot of work). Once the reader has recuperated the poem, the pleasure is the reader's not the poets, and at this point the poem really is a gift. It belongs to the reader now. This doesn’t mean that there can’t be incorrect readings, only that reading is ultimately where the meaning, the message, the pleasure of a poem resides.

It's worth pointing out that the poetic exchange does not take place in a vacuum. There is a triangulation:

        the poem/poet

        the reader

        the language, including the history of poetry

The poet and reader must share a language; otherwise, the poem is unintelligible; this is what Milton meant by his “audience fit though few.” If the reader chooses to read it, the poem switches on the lights of the language elements that the reader and poet share. The poem can only be a gift to or from one who has learned its language.

The main point is that the poet does not present the poem to the reader as a finished item like a necktie, a completed message that the reader simply consumes. The reader has to finish the poem – the last step in the brewer’s art. The reader pours the poem into their own glass made of language and of the history of poetry. The reader’s enjoyment of the brew is their gift to the poet. But the reader doesn’t have to give this gift, and it’s better if the poet doesn’t solicit it (the advantage of conventional publishing over self-publishing). It’s fine for a poet to make their work public, but no reader has time to read all the poems they’re constantly barraged with. Reading a poem should be a free choice, not an obligation.

We Must Love One Another and Die

Terrible iron curtain years, don’t know how I survived.

Thought of running away, go to California, my brother-in-law Oliver did that, got a job selling clothes in LA.

Slept in my disgusting bed as my father called it, my dirty mags on a shelf in the closet.

Had to put toilet paper in my underwear to staunch the drip, one day stringing out of my gym trunks, thank God no one saw. 

What was his name who tormented me? Larry Bewley, big blond kid I fantasized about slugging in the jaw.

Football player could whup me with a finger, but how could he publicly murder me for slugging him? Beneath his dignity, I was safe.

What the hell?

Walks I took down west of Colo Blvd, why I never had the energy to walk to Cherry Creek I don't know.

Like I never had the stamina to write more than about eight lines of verse at a time, stoned late at night, what a wimp I was!

Whatever. I was a serious young man.

But I found out I talked like a faggot, I always knew my father did.

Some fucking faggot.

So I guess I changed my speech, or I thought I had, George H. W. talks like a combination of John Wayne and Mr. Rodgers, I didn't fool anybody but myself.

So, terrorized into gender conformity.

Fooled for fifty years.

Fuckin-a.

And I didn't go to Vietnam, a miracle for me, what a fairy I would have turned out to be there!

And who would punish me? sent down holes in the ground to scout for booby-trappers, I drill my access hole, I stand my look-out.

In here I'm a beautiful animal, but adored by myself alone, who knows how I'm regarded by others? by women I rule out men.

This was from early and not hard for me because I do love girls, especially myself as a girl, it turns out.

I have to add silly qualifiers, it turns out I thought I was.

I was never hot for Larry Bewley, I know that.

Took my driver's training from some guy who knew Larry, admired him, and kept talking about him between encouraging interjections: "There you go, you just committed a traffic violation," "Oh-oh, you just hit a pedestrian."

Fairy faggot.

I had a gay roommate in college who was not attracted to me.

We were with one another like two soldiers in a foxhole, sleeping separate, me in my bed he in his sleeping bag.

A very Spartan lad, didn't like sweets, if I'd shown myself to him in my true slutty colors he probably would have been disgusted, I never thought of trying it till now.

I had several more roommates, including Eldon, an ethically-minded psychology major with false teeth.

Eldon wanted to get married and was afraid he was just turning into a sugar daddy.

Eldon did get married, to a girl who, he said, smelled like the first girl he ever fucked.

She wasn't maximally his type, he frankly admitted, but she was the one provided to be his wedded wife.

March 2016

After My Death

Before my death, I was patiently awaiting

(in spite of the fear of the undiscovered country)

the refreshment of the blank page, surcease of pain,

and an end both to the importunity of living

desire and the discomfort of dying.

So that after I died it was a shocking surprise

to find that I was still alive, still bearing

the same morbid fetishes, never confessed,

the same awkward past life, painful to remember,

dangerous to own.

And I stood in my footsteps, naked, uncertain

before I didn't know what judgment,

bashful, hoping to be found serviceable, maybe

just to clean out the bathrooms and report back

when I thought I was finished.

My dying was like fainting during a long sermon,

oblivion fading gradually to reveal

the whole congregation staring down at me—

coming to myself reluctantly to accept

the embarrassment of my death.

February, 1999

After Ezra

After Ezra, the Jews who lived in Palestine
visited the Temple on each
of the three festivals.
And those unable to do this—
for the Jewish people was now
spreading more and more throughout the world—
spent half a shekel for the maintenance
of the Temple, and tried
to visit it as pilgrims at least
once during their lifetime. (Bernard J. Bamberger, The Story of Judaism.)

…

So there would be thousands of stories to tell
of men and women in Syria, Mesopotamia, Egypt,
traveling to Jerusalem once in their lifetimes
and dying having fulfilled this duty.
Probably the journey was difficult,
with hunger, thirst, sickness, highwaymen.
Certainly many died while making the journey.
Probably they bought souvenirs
that rattled around in their houses, to be
inherited by children—
a ruby glass pitcher inscribed:
Maggie from Blarney Castle—1893.
One imagines thousands of ordinary Jews
with this journey as the climax of their lives.
One imagines an individual among the thousands,
in 300 BCE, say, and after her another,
almost indistinguishable—
a procession of lives
most not differing remarkably one from another
(from our perspective anyhow)
until 70 CE when the Temple fell.

…

From our perspective, why say
that these were separate lives? —

any more than a worker bee last year
is a separate being from this year’s specimen
in the same or in a different hive;
the significant structure of one life
is the same as another.
Isn’t the sole fact now for each of them
that they were pilgrims to the Temple in Jerusalem,
traveling there to pay homage
to Moses and the deliverance out of Egypt?
That’s all we know of them in history.

…

Before the world began, an almost
infinite host of souls
drifted, each one suspended
in an almost endless torpor,
waiting to be born.
For thirteen billion years at least they waited
(some are waiting to this day).
Or perhaps they slept, waking only
to squawk at the light
for a moment almost infinitely brief
beside those eons of waiting.
And now that the soul finds itself
alive in the world, it must
get to work; now is its time
to do or not do,
to do good or evil;
it will never have this opportunity again.
God, of course, disposed each soul’s moment;
and, of course, God would not waste even
one soul, so all are born in His
good time; and God foreknew
the infinitely improbable train of events
that would lead to each individual birth;
and each soul is born into
the special body that God intended
it to have—
everything provided for,
nothing left to chance.

Would it be comforting
to believe in this determined world?
 

…

Each May in St. Paul, Minnesota,
the Central High School orchestra presents a final concert.
Graduating seniors are recognized.
One or two popular members
subject the director to a gift-presentation roast.
The students play in
the hierarchy of their attainments.
Then the soloists receive flowers.
One year my daughter leads
the second flutes;
one year my second daughter
is principal oboist.
A year or ten years later,
another student leads
the second flutes,
another sits in the principal’s chair.
My brown-haired flutist is reincarnated
as a carrot-topped, freckled boy,
my red-haired oboist
as a wispy African American girl.
The structure, the roles, are the same.
Those who inhabit them —
are they different,
or are they the same?

…

My brown-haired daughter
would never have been born if I had
followed my first plan
and attended graduate school in Tucson, Arizona
instead of the University of Minnesota.
But Tucson lost my transcripts,
so I was able to meet my wife.
If I had gone to Arizona,
would I have had a child with another woman,
the child perhaps neither brown-haired nor female,
but possessing the same soul?—
None of this child’s thoughts or experiences
would have been the same; or, in another view,
they all would have been the same—
that is, human.

…

Seventy years ago, more than
six million descendants of the people of Ezra
were forced by terrorized bureaucrats
to depart on another journey.
All of the progeny they would have passed down
are absent today. None of them are here
to meet and chat with,
to marry and have children with.
Yet we don’t miss them.
We don’t miss them because they never were.
They only might have been.
And, though this doesn’t make up for their loss,
many descendants of the people of Ezra are here
to meet and chat with.
After all the happenstance,
all the sudden, unexpected arrivals and departures,
all the seed spilled upon the ground,
all the unforeseeable decisions
to go out or to stay home—
what is the probability of any soul
getting a chance on this hazardous field?

…

What's missing, then? What am I leaving out?
What’s missing is only
the pilgrims' self-awareness,
which the pilgrims share with me
and all other human beings.
They were proud, envious, and lustful.
They rejoiced in
union and increase. They begot
children who they hoped would surpass
other people's children. They acquired
things in the world around them. They tasted
wine and meat. They felt
the pull of the earth,
the grave force
that finally pulled them under,
as it will me.
What is not captured
in this vision of homeward travelers
is only what is deprecated by
the Law they abided—
sin: the attachment to self,
the exclusive self-regard
that cares for nothing but its own.
It doesn't matter if their progeny
extend to the present day,
or if they vanished like the unborn heirs
pf pogrom victims
(whom we do not miss).
Distance, time, and number
avail not.
After the extinction
of all that false consciousness,
their journey to the Temple remains
the pilgrims' sole blazon,
making the pilgrims in fact interchangeable—
a firmament of virtually
identical stars,
or one single star multitudinously shining
in different times and places.

Nice Twig Cinquain

Easy
to inhabit
this little span between
my non-existent periods.
Sweet perch!

Jesus Cinquains

How far
to Bethlehem?
Not very far. People
will help you find your way. Follow
the star!

OK,
Jesus is the
world savior, born in a
cave—God hologram floating to
the breast.

I see
Jesus on the
street corner, cardboard sign:
“Homeless. Cold. Hungry.” It isn’t
Jesus.

I see
a dog in the
alley, lame, whimpering,
howling, crying. Nope, not Jesus
either.

I come
to a saloon,
door barred against the cold—
abruptly opened, Jesus bounced
headlong.

This time
it really is
Jesus, body buckling,
sliding, teeth colliding with a
lamp post.

Any
desolation
counts as Jesus—homeless,
as we get up out of our graves
and walk.

Subject Kings

We are subject kings,
ruling
a desolation.
We are subject kings,
ruling
a desolation.

We are subject in our halls,
subject in our stalls,
subject in overalls,
subject up to our eyeballs,
subject.
We are subject in our homes,
subject in our rooms,
subject to our dooms,
subject in our tombs,
subject.

We are subject kings,
ruling
a desolation.
We are subject kings,
ruling
a desolation.

We are subject in our minds,
subject through our lines,
subject with our signs,
subject to our rhymes,
subject.
We are subject to our fears,
subject in our ears,
subject through our tears,
subject in our beers,
subject.

We are subject kings,
ruling
a desolation.
We are subject kings,
ruling
a desolation

We are subject to our gods,
subject holding rods,
subject bearing hods,
subject in our mod squads,
subject in our pea pods,
subject.
We are subject in our head,
subject into bed,
subject feet of lead,
subject without cred,
subject never fed,
subject turning red,
subject unto dread,
subject us instead,
subject live or dead,
subject.

We are subject in our hood,
subject to no good,
subject as we stood,
subject.

We are subject on the shelf,
subject to ourself,
subject.

We are subject kings,
ruling
a desolation.
We are subject kings,
ruling
a desolation.

Peanut Butter Jelly With a Baseball Bat

What is your stake in the poem? you asked me—

really the fundamental question—

though our relationship seemed adversarial, maybe it had to be.

You were my poetic shrink, and I had to walk on my own.

Whatever... What is my stake?

South Texas. Tiny brightly painted houses on cinderblocks.

Old Hidalgo Pumphouse, long white border wall to the south,

the Rio Grande having shifted half a mile to the north after the Brownsville hurricane.

The Virgin of Guadalupe surrounded by bright roses,

beautiful pink and blue, standing on a huge black crescent,

vaquero cherub supporting her feet.

Alvin and Donna, easily in their 'eighties,

drive their van to birding sites all over the country and volunteer as guides,

Alvin asking me to put my foot on the orange metal step stool if it rattled

(they really didn’t want us to get out of the car)—

Alvin worried a sandled man in the grass, side of the road, would get chiggers.

We did get chiggers, big time—Robin and Linda—Jim and I not as bad.

Today, back home, we're quarantining our clothes and suitcases.

Sorry, I was a pain in the ass in class, you called me a trouble-maker.

I'm a talker, I admit, always interjecting

questions mainly,

like What does it mean?

Same as yours: What is my stake

in this presentation, in this landscape?

A poem always has to end with its fingers on its chin,

some reflection on life that makes the hearer say ahhhhhhhhh...—

That’s the self-improvement angle of poetry, not too different from a sermon, I guess,

like one in Canon Chasuble’s unpublished book—What a read!

Finley, Dean, Fleury and I joking on Facebook this morning—two kinds of poets,

hierophantic and non-hierophantic—The Hierophant, a member of the Tarot deck—

my college girlfriend Lizzy Lea choosing my Tarot identity card

the jack of Pentacles, not Wands,

hitting me where it counts. Where it hurts. Still does.

It hurts when I think of the opportunities I've squandered.

How many lives do you get, anyway? The Buddha lived myriad lives,

incarnating as individual Snakes, Rats, Neanderthals—

all of animal evolution in Their genome.

Thank you, Bodhisattva, thank you, my own soul,

for your unfailing persistence (who’s the Hierophant now?)

living all those lives and still wanting nothing more

than nothingness. That's the stake.

To describe and invoke the colors, smells,

the fanged heads of the thousand-headed snake.

Gauche to mention the nothingness supporting them.

Antikythera Shipwreck Skeleton

Don’t see what the big deal about it is.
Don’t they have other skeletons
from that era?

People expect bones to be around 

for a long time, but cemeteries
last longer than the bones in them do.

For the Love of a Fiddle

But yesterday I played a gig with Sherry and Don and Rosa, a young woman recently out of school.

I’d given Rosa on indefinite loan
an interesting fiddle I wasn’t using—
antiqued—that is, marked and gouged 
to make it look older than it was,
Caspar da Salo carved on the back.
Mark Wagar told me,
possibly made in Eastern Europe fifty to a hundred years ago—
top too heavy for it ever to be valuable, but a genuine
attempt at a Caspar da Salo copy (early 18^th-century
Italian maker pre-dating Stradivarius; most cheap violins
are Stradivarius copies). And my friend, Dr. Wendy Adams,
a classical violinist, once said she liked
the big, pleasant sound it made.
Da Salo had a characteristic double purfling
around the top—Lee Guthrie told me it was painted on
(I don't think he looked closely), but Mark said, no,
someone took the trouble to do an entire
double inlay—hours of work.
The antiquing job was probably by a later seller.
So, evidently, built with love from factory-cut materials.
Rosa said she was keeping it at the Celtic Junction,
using it as her teaching fiddle.

Warmed my heart to hear.

Poems Like Tooth Necklaces

Bones
rhymes with
stones.

Bones and words
can be strung,
like stones.

Bones are brittler
than sticks
or stones.

Words

crack
bones.

The Skeleton Hangs It Up

Voluble Skeleton

Nothing
if not
articulate.

Skeleton on Cloud 9
You can learn a lot about bones
from building one of those plastic model skeletons.
But don’t sniff the airplane glue.

What the Skeleton Is
The nadir of material existence.
Neither flesh
nor spirit.

When Did the Skeleton Exist?
The moment a particle
of light touched
a particle of lime.

The Skeleton’s Journey to the Afterlife
I had to pass through gates
made of deer antlers,
like in Jackson, Wyoming.

What the Skeleton Will Be After the Fireworks
Not separate
bones anymore—a slightly radioactive
calcium sea bed.

Skeleton Bride, Skeleton Bridegroom
The miracle at Cana
only mimicked the crucial change:
blood to love.

Marriage of the Ghost and the Skeleton
The heart
of a phantom
is beating!

The Skeleton’s Song
On that Resurrection morning when all dead in Christ shall rise,
I’ll have a new body,
I’ll have a new life.

Skeleton in a Car Seat

We dug up some
old Indian bones
and strapped them in the car seat.

It was creepy.

It looked like we were poaching
skeleton babies.

Some Exemplary Ghosts

1.

Old Poison-Ear,
in a bad spot, really ticked off.
“Remember me!” he said.

Did Hamlet’s father shout or scream
those final words to his son?
How do actors pronounce them?

An actor can intone
“Remember me!” but no living human being
could shout or scream it.

2.

The dead woman in “Cold Blows the Wind”
whose lover hangs around her grave
a twelfth month and a day.

“All I want is a kiss from your clay-
cold lips,”
he insists.

“My lips are much colder than you think,” she says.
“The black hole of my heart
will rip the life from you.”

3.

Tiresias, whom Odysseus consults about his future.

“Odysseus shalt return through spiteful Neptune,
lose all companions.”

The Skeleton on Ghosts

Difference Between Skeletons and Ghosts

A skeleton can’t be
colder than the clay.
A ghost can.

What Skeletons Know and Ghosts Deny

The only good

thing about us is
our beating hearts.

The Eclipse

I picked a berry from a bush,
a wild blackberry it was, plump and full of juice.
So delicate it was!
I thought it would collapse
upon itself and be all marred;
and surely it was half marred already
(if it ever had been swollen, perfect,
before I touched it).
Its juice stained my fingers from a bruised place in the flesh:
more and more limp,
and lost the perfect dome,
and now half the tiny bulbs all wet and crushed.

At first at least
a potential magnificence,
thriving on its stem,
when, as soon touched,
as no eye could save it, the care folly
that tried to set it right.
Chagrinned, I ate it
to salve my disappointment.
Then I looked again at the bush
and the trees around it,
at the sky
and the clouds in the sky.
Nothing looked quite right,
so I wandered on.

Then it seemed to me that the whole world was a marred blackberry,
since the sky didn't look quite right,
not just not quite right, but not right at all;
and the blackberry
that I had eaten lay foul in the dirt,
the whole globe mashed,
and burst were all the tiny bulbs,
their sweet liquor brackish, mixed with loam,
the pink dome
becoming earth-rot, vanishing, vacuous:
And purified all expectation,
no mirror any longer for desire.

The blackberry was not,
and gone with it all swollen, bulbous blacks,
not into earth either, the earth too, the earth itself
vaporized, and gone all ammonia stench,
the methanes diffused away.
And not one sense remained to tell
that any fruit had ever been to pluck.

The emptiness then was like
a thrust up into broad air
after down stroke of arms,
a kicking back into a cloud,
a propulsion upon waste.
The disappearance of the blackberry was like
entering a thicket.
And I oozed through the insensate dark,
emerging into a clearing,
to a slightly new sky

and another blackberry bush.

about 1985

Napoleon Bonies and Others

Does a Skeleton Cast a Shadow?

Yes,
but it isn’t
scared of it.

Can a Skeleton Be a Masochist?

No, it doesn’t
enjoy the luxury
of pain.

Bonaparte, the Skeleton

1. How Do You Spell Napoleon’s Nickname?

Webster says “bony,” but my grandmother remembers,
“If you don’t behave yourself, Boney’ll get you!”
She was born when Boney was still on the rampage.

2. How We Remember Boney

In a cocked hat, with his hand
inside his jacket, grasping
the wire holding his bones together.

3. Young Boney

Bonier in his early campaigns—Italy, Austria;
till, amid the wastage of Russia and Spain,
Boney got fat, and his luck ran out.

4. After St. Helena

Where can Boney put his armies now,
without his sleevies 
of skin?

Bone or Ash (in Dust or Chunks)

In memoriam C.J. Banjoff

You can’t reduce

a skeleton much
by burning it.

Masochism

Young dental hygiene assistant Laura
likes the challenge
whitish hair tucked under blue paper cap
gray mask
me lying head-in-the-lobe-rests
I should have said head-in-a-vise
Randy Quaid
Mule Mulhall
come on Buddusky
requested no anesthetic
Laura starting right in
shouldering into her work
water pic my gumline

nam myoho renge kyo
nifty flashy blue-handled scrapers
I can see out the corner
my watery eye
feet clamped
sandaled toes
swaying in the precise arcs of Laura’s
pebbly scraping as she
stares down at me
through tubular magnifying lenses
really just seems to scratch an itch
skeletons dancing behind my eyes
my Barbaric Yawp reading why’d

I play so hard to get?
and what else did I do
but post a supercilious poem
on the Gettable Peach page?
I was asking for it
and got it too
praying
then it won’t hurt no more
suction tube whistling in my left cheek
some dumb cluck kid
too beaten down and terrorized
to know what he wants
beautiful junior high girl

who played Hero in the park

lovely low area in the grass
actors running barefoot into Shakespeare’s
virtual Messina
today twenty years belatedly
complimenting her on her interpretation
silly self-conscious pre-adolescent child
angel or whore which is crueler?
working in the gift store now
bloody marks on feet and wrists
suddenly running for his life
but it’s amazing how good pain feels
when you aren’t afraid anymore.

Banjo (Skeleton Light, Come!)

Banjos and Skeletons Are the Same Thing

A banjo is made out of metal, same as a skeleton.
But keep the drum head tight, or else
the brackets’ll do the limbo walk.

The Talking Dumb

Dry bones in the valley got up and took a little walk.
And the deaf could hear
and the dumb in that valley could talk.

Can a Jaw Bone Talk by Itself?

Without a tongue, no way!
But two rib bones can, when this old man
plays knick-knack on my spine.

The Skeleton Visits the Minnesota State Fair

Skeleton in the Minnesota DNR Barn

Lookit that
snapping turtle
skull!


International Pavilion: Skeleton Asking About the Croaking Frogs

Different pitches and timbres depending on size
and material, wood or stone.
But no croaking frogs made of bone.

Now that the Artist Formerly Known as Prince Has Joined the Clattering Clacking Crew. . .

1. Grim Wager

We made a bet: How many
Prince portraits in the crop art exhibit?
Five, I won! Plus Prince’s Cloud Guitar.

2. What kinds of Popcorn Were in the Prince Portrait That Won a Purple Merit Ribbon?

Parching Lavender Mandan,
Early Pink Pearl,
Dakota Black.

3. Confusing Symbol

The Prince symbol’s on a mitten
hanging in the knitting area,
but it looks like an anchor crossed with a flugelhorn.

Skeleton on a Stick

Superfluous? I wish.

They forgot to to take the bone out
of my Pronto Pup.

Skeleton A and B Sides

Skeleton Misnomer

Not a bone in that thing at all!
The lowly tarsal
will survive the lordly boner.

Piling Bones vs. Playing Bones

    Oh, we drove 'em nine miles
     then we stacked 'em up in piles
     'cept what got drownded in the river.

Who was the Skeleton in real life?

Tiberius? Stalin? Pol Pot?
Nah, Bojangles. Or Milton Berle.

Essay on Voice

The question with poetry:
Should the poet’s voice be in it?
or should it just be—what?
items of data of outer or inner sense?
Voice comes from within,
but toward and from the outside
it’s a bandage, a screen,
a dissembling clown.
Maybe the goal is to be purely without voice,
that interior cock on a fence post.

But how could the voice ever be gone?
What’s left without it? Whatever.
The Black Dog Cafe. The tomatoes.
Alvin and Donna and the orange
metal step stool. How are these items collected
except by being named by the voice?
The voice speaks images, thoughts, feelings
after consciousness registers them.
Does consciousness select them from a flood
of undifferentiated sound and light?
Does it practice journalistic objectivity
as nothing but a recording machine,
a camera?

Maybe the voice expresses
the important feelings of a sensitive person,
even a wise individual who can impart
special truth to us.
I have never imagined myself as such a person.
The poets I love were much too modest
to pretend to be
(except maybe in late, bad poems).
Maybe Jesus Himself, but I equate Jesus
with Socrates, who spent his whole live proving
that no one can be such a person.
But the language used by the voice to speak
was already wise
before Socrates ever set his dialectical wedge.

The voice—consciousness itself—
is two things: desire and meditation.
It can express desire—what’s wrong with that?
It can watch the objects of desire pass by.

Resolution: try to quiet the voice.
It may seem like a barrel of laughs,
but it’s just a barking dog.

Big Tote Bag, Jerry Jeff Walker

Well I’m down to my last legs as you can see Lord
Robin camping with Carol
left me a Farmer’s Market errand get
tomatoes and peppers
threw my car into the street
hadn’t eaten
drove West St. Paul via High Bridge
El Burrito Mercado my favorite, wondering
Will there be any
up in heaven?
Will there be any?
I’ve got to know
parked slanty lot
got the breakfast bowl and nothing else
routed on Robert
Just want to know if everything
gonna be in the middle
not too fast
not too short
parked really far under the overpass
Market molasses to walk through
no cash hike SA and back
box of tomatoes Asian
vendor furthest from my car watched him
dump ‘em in a bag no handle thirty pounds
carried through the Market next to my stomach
across the train tracks past the first lot
did set down once near Tanpoppo Noodle
Will there be any
up in heaven?
OK, back again
not too lame
not too slim
get the loot don’t be slow
right on time
corn, red peppers, jalapeños
all fit in the big pelican-giraffe bag Robin made me bring
and I’ve been toting along with me this whole time
trying to get the straps to stick to my shoulder
sure enough car
but walking back to Black Dog coffee
password blackdog all lowercase
Lord before I go I’ve got to know
I’ve got to know
another hour home start boiling
and peeling those tomatoes.

Skeleton Wondering About Its Own Soul

Where'd
the damned thing
go?

The Skeleton on the Soul

just phantom flesh
a tingling in the limbs
til the fires burn it away

The Skeleton's Mixed Regret

Pay the bill, tip the waiter.

I
liked
Satan.

The Dark Side of the Skeleton

Could Skeleton Dust Account for the Dark Matter in the Universe?

Of course not, stupid!

Skeletons
are white!

Show Us Your Dark Side, Mr. Skeleton, Sir!

When I was in the tomb, the darkness surrounded me.

But now my grave blinks open,
I'm blinded by the light.

The Frosty Bones

She couldn't find
the finger bone the skeleton dropped

when he ascended to the attic 

like a walking chandelier.

But he's up there,
scratching his chalky noggin.

Would the Skeleton Be a Good Candidate for the Scheduling Analyst/Real-Time Analyst Postion?

Afraid not. Skeletons
no longer exist in real-time, so schedules
are incomprehensible to them.

Skeleton Precursor

Berryman’s Mr. Bones, no doubt.
Now there you exaggerate, sah!
Henry still be livin’.

Lord, how he wolde pry 

After the butterfly! 

Lorde, how he wolde hop 

After the gressop! 

Skeleton Sweet Spot

Where do dem bones ring truest?
Skeleton singin' all day long
'bout eternity.

Skeleton Assurance

There was an old man named Michael Finnegan

He grew whiskers on his chin-ne-gan.
The wind came up and blew 'em back in again. 
Poor old Michael Finnegan! 
Begin again.

You’ll get to live again—
or someone will—
when eternity sloughs off its skin again.

Skeleton Platonism

Every single individual mouse, whether
caught in a trap or killed by the cat, is an eternal
form. And mice don’t live to be old!

Long version

Pearl Pirie used the word, “essentialism”—
supposedly, a belief in the real existence of ideal forms.

I don’t know about “ideal”—I think we can dispense with it.
I believe that people are eternal forms.
Actually, everything that exists for a span of time,
each individual, located configuration of matter and energy,
is an eternal form—
even non-living things
(whatever you may call “life”).
“Truth” is not an eternal form,
because it never had a particular temporal existence—
Jung’s archetypes likewise—
these are just categories for sorting.

Every single individual mouse,
whether caught in a trap
or killed by the cat,
is an eternal form.
And mice don’t live to be old!

If it seems incredibly boring to exist forever
as the particular person you were—
the particles of your bones growing ever finer as they fly 
away from one another in space—
you don’t have to worry about that,
because you are no longer that person.
You are all the forms together now.

Sestina: The High Window

Of the full load of summer, you came with a basket

Filled with colored globes. I looked from my latticed window

To search for you running toward me, screened by dark willow,

The rustle of whose leaves whispered your nearness.

I would have sucked the piths of a spreading banquet,

But stood aloof and sour, feeling like an asshole.

I wonder why I wanted to be such an asshole,

Why I would not partake of the full, thatched basket

That summer tendered. I guess that the high window

Through which I viewed the day, and the thick willow

Screen, made me pause and doubt your nearness.

I sat down to an unfulfilling banquet.

And I would think as I rose from my banquet

How sad it was to be this lonely asshole,

Missing the gift, wanting the foregone basket.

And I'd return again to my placid window.

Pendants of light would reach me through the willow,

But no regaling sound to serve for nearness.

And as I mused up there, a glint of the nearness

Of the cold stars pricked at my eyes.  It was a banquet

Of stone that I beheld, fit for the asshole

That I had found myself to be. There was a basket

Of ashen, slab-shaped tablets, shaped like white windows

To be placed there in the soft turf under the willow.

And then the night came down, and rain, and the willow

Shook and its branches slashed together. No nearness

Now, no thought of a resumed banquet.

And the hail struck at the roof and screamed at me, Asshole!

Then the stars came out like cats' eyes in a basket,

And I saw the pale moon rise through the shrouded window.

And there was no more to think. My pallid window

Turned wholly blank.  The extremest twigs of the willow

Scratched against the pane, but their crazy nearness

Caused nary a tear. If there had been a banquet

Set for arriving guests, some asshole

Had scared the guests away and spilled the basket.

How could this asshole have so spoiled the banquet

As to preclude all nearness—grasping for willow

strands through the shattered window to restore a basket.

1990-ish