The Dream, Jorge Luis Borges

While the midnight clocks are wasting
abundant time,
I will go further than the shipmates of Ulysses
Into the dream region, inaccessible
To human memory,
Salvaged from an immersed region
That I can’t plumb:
Botanical simples,
Strange animals,
Dialogues with the dead,
Faces that are actually masks,
Words of very old languages,
And sometimes a horror incomparable
to anything the day can give.
I will be everyone or no one. I will be the other
I am without knowing, the one who has watched
This other dream, my waking. He
assesses it, resigned and smiling.

Crazy-DAZE

The beach is a place where you can feel
You're the only soul in the world that's real.
Well I see a face coming through the haze,
I remember you from those crazy days. The Who

What the heck is Crazy-DAZE?

Some kind of wet-tee-shirt festival?—
the kind of deal where you get dunked
when someone hits the bull’s eye
with a well-flung jonathan.

But it’s cold hard
winter now, can’t lounge
around half-naked on the porch.
Can’t really go,
outside at all!

But the reason why
I even thought of Crazy-DAZE
was because someone sent me a link
to Days ‘N Daze, "Day Gaunts,"
from Rogue Taxidermy.

Swarm-of-katydids rhythm.
Suds in the kitchen and
mold in the sink. What do we
do tomorrow?
I also like

"Misanthropic Drunken Loner,"
which speaks to me on a lot of levels, starting
with, My breakfast is right out of the medicine cabinet,
a remedy for the aftermath of my habit, sometimes
it’s the ones who try to help who hurt the most.

I’m gonna hide away
on the top of a mountain,
so no one has to deal with me.
Sorry I just like myself
better than I like you.

And their "Post-Party Depression" video,
with the nice washboard shot at 0.53, and a cool
fight between the blue-haired trumpet-playing girl
and a tall skinny guy at about 2.30.—
Sooner or later

this party gets busted

and your friends all stumble back home.
You never know what you’ve got till it’s gone.
Tell me when the fire dies down
what the fuck will you do?

The Reason Why We Have Donald Trump Now is Because Most Americans Hated George Plimpton so Much

Got up and took tylenol in the middle of the night
and slept in my bathrobe. Horribly cold and kind of prickly.
Sore from my 90-minute yoga class yesterday—something about
the "slow-flow" pace really kicked my butt.

Tells me something.

Sitting here at my usual station,

reading a poem about always being under surveillance

by people who show up everywhere I go—how do they do it?
It's amazing how certain people seem to be just in your life—

your "karass," Vonnegut called it. You

continually meet them in the oddest places -

like in New Orlean leaving a bar, when neither of you

ever set foot in New Orleans before. But there are other people
with whom I interact every day,
whom I didn’t even know two years ago.

Some I’ve worked with closely,
some I’ve helped in various ways,
and they’ve helped me. What a charming fellow
that George Plimpton guy must have been!

his life a total

mad social whirl—friend of Jackie Onassis.

So, was Plimpton the one who did the NY Times International Cookbook?

No, that was Craig Claiborne. I think it was Plimpton who played percussion
for Bernstein once. Bernstein was all over his ass—
made Plimpton regret his audacity.

People come into my life,
and some of them work and abide
with me in precious ways that make me
watch for and await their presence.
I'm under surveillance, myself,

but I wander off radar sometimes,
just to kind of lend a hand in some way somewhere.
And what worries me a tiny bit, and also makes me happy,
is that when you choose to help someone,
you're committed for life.

January, Almost Rural

It is a blizzard tonight, and after dinner

we go out, walk to the corner

against stinging snow,

the cat bounding after,

and cross, stepping over dark tire ruts,

up the side street to the corner house

in which an old poor couple live.

Their yard full of roses in the summer,

now the holiday is over,

they have changed their yard decorations

from manger scene to polar bear and penguins

and snow man with red-light-bulb nose—

plywood flats carved out with a jig saw.

My daughters disturb

the inviolate blanket in front of their house,

then we start back because of the cold,

the cat taking refuge in the bushes,

and cross again

to our undecorated house,

the girls frisking, rolling in the snow,

I going around to the garage to get firewood,

then back again to the front

where my wife is taking the younger in.

The older wants to stay out,

so we go back around,

I plodding down the walk,

she plowing into the drifts.

She makes an angel.

I take her hands as she rises,

help her not to mar the whirring form.

Inside by the fire, I turn the radio on,

some modern orchestral piece,

then Brahms's Third,

playing as I write this—

my life struck through with miracle,

even if I don't feel it.

1987

Villanelle for Lorriann Centineo

I want to write a freaking villanelle.
(Why should Lorriann have all the fun?)
If you would buy them, I’d have dreams to sell.

When I hear the sledges ringing with the bells,
I can’t pretend I think my work is done:
I want to write a freaking villanelle.

But I’m not sure that you can hear me well,
though I squeeze my words out louder than a gun.
If you would buy them, I’d have dreams to sell.

But what you’d think you’re buying, who can tell?
I fry my fish and slap it on a bun.
That’s how I’ll serve my freaking villanelle.

Maybe you think my lines don’t really gell.
Maybe you think I’m just sucking my thumb.
But if you would buy them, I’d have dreams to sell.

The lambkins are a-leaping in the dell.

The larks are singing with the deaf and dumb.
And I’ve done wrote my freaking villanelle.
Get out your wallet! I have dreams to sell.

Exposed

What
do
I want
to shine my
light on this fine day?
But let me say, I feel exposed!

When
there’s
too much
light on you,
you can lose color.
Your features become indistinct.

That’s
one
problem.
Another
is that people grow
weary of your bright shining face.

It’s
sad
when you
know you’re no
more the dark room that
people grope for elephants in.

Still,
you
have to
stand blanched and
naked in the light.
I doubt if you'll outshine the sun.

January 1, 2018: What Are You Writing Now, Max?

Is there anything that could not be a poem?
—It gets embarrassing, Chief!
I don’t even want to mention this stuff in my report!

“Poem” is such an affected word!
Leonard Ungar (renowned remnant of the Southern Agrarian school)
didn’t pronounce the “e” in “poem” at all—

just the plosive “po,”
then blowing a little air out of his nose on the “’m”:
Po’m.

It’s best if you loose your breath on the percussive “po,”
and then pull your belly in a bit on the cunning “’m.”
So you need both an out- and an in-breath to say “po’m.”

“Po’m” 
is a complete Ying-Yang 
unto itself!

That’s why we’re all so reverent about poetry,
always invoking our devout little cones of silence.
So that no one will be able
 to understand us when we write.