Another Machine To Praise

I might lie to you.
The way wood rots, growing darker
like a coastal edge receding
over the earth’s curve.
At this desk boredom is a fire.
I might light a wooden dog on fire to praise your
Beauty which is illegal in the country
Of my brain-pan where dictators
Follow easily each other
Soft and large and prone to sweats.
One pretended he was blind.
I might lie again like a tongue
upon your various fractures.
And if I lie what then, what tools
do we need to save the carousel, the hammered lion,
to feed him with our hands.
I might wish to hold you before the trumpets
And later the skyline.
I might lie to you about a childhood
When I drank from a creek
Because I was far from home.
It was hot and I liked it that way.


***

Here is a revision, suggested to me by my friend Adam Tavel.

A NOTE RETRIEVED FROM THE DYING MAN'S THROAT-CAVE


I might lie to you the way
Wood lies, growing darker
Like a coastal edge receding
Over the earth’s curve.

At this desk boredom is a fire.
I might light a wooden dog on fire
To praise your Beauty which is illegal
In the country of my brain-pan
Where dictators follow easily each other
Soft and large and prone to sweat.

One pretended he was blind.
I might lie to you again, cleanly,
Or tongue the armor of a tank.
In either case, an incurious compass
That aligns the various fractures.

And if I lie to you, what then, what tools
Do we need to save the carousel,
The hammered lion, to feed him
With our hands. I might wish to hold
You before the trumpets
And later the skyline.
I might lie to you about a childhood
When I drank from a creek
Because I was far from home.

letter to M --

August 27, 2009

Dear M--,

It has been raining these last two days, everywhere it is wet and there seems no place to go that is dry. Even what is dry in its bones is wet. I wanted to write you a letter for the longest time. Then I thought I’d save something special for you but that wasn’t working because nothing special seemed around. I went outside and picked up Biscuit and brought him in and said, “Such a handsome cat.” That was it. One day was like that and the next day, too. And then it was night so there. You can see I have my little boat in the pond but it is tied to the dock and anyone who rows it will stay in that place, close to shore, rocking uselessly against the rope. I told Nora I was going to write you a letter and she said she was jealous and I said you should write M--. Really, Nora asked. I said, yes, just don’t mention poetry. Nora said, that is good to know. After I felt badly because I thought, you don’t know that. You don’t know that M-- wouldn’t like to hear from Nora and moreover you don’t know she wouldn’t like to hear Nora talk about poetry, because after all Nora is a prose person and she is deeply intelligent and interesting and so might have fine things to say about poetry, plus she is Nora so M-- would like that right off the bat. I will write her and tell her she should write you and that anything I said about what should or should not be said should be discarded. I have a red history of saying things I shouldn’t have said. Oh well. Right this moment in the kitchen I am eating Swedish almond cookies that C-- made. They are very simple as the ingredients are simple: butter, one egg white, sugar, flour and almond extract. They are small round domes dusted with confectionery sugar. I made tea. It is quiet here. C-- is in the living room. J-- is up stairs. The cats are out for now. (They’ll be in soon.) The washing machine is churning quietly away. It would be nice if you were here. Drinking tea. Eating cookies. Well, it would be.


Next moment seemed
Remarkably like
The previous.


I was deeply touched you gave me erasures at the graduation, deeply. I think I love them, in my way, and after my own fashion, as much as any set of words I have ever seen. They are quiet and beautiful, and sad. Which is fitting. But wonderful for being all of those things. Notice I said, things. That is what I meant. For I feel qualities of life at times to be things, made, material. Anyway what question did I ask?

How deeply moved I was by the erased poem that in its entirety goes like this:

Our hearts were
Death-stones of the
Voice
Unborn.*

Those words found under what text I do not know, but those words suggest to me the voice of Paul Celan. I think about those death-stones when I read those words and I think I see them they are beautiful and sad and quiet. They might be stones on a beach or, more likely, in a creek.

I have saved everything you gave me. The cardboard, the envelope, the typewriter ribbon. All of it. I have saved it. It all seems special to me. All of it is the gift.

Some days I wake up and I want to say “Fuck poetry!” or “Poetry is bullshit! “ and think maybe we should just hand-write notes to one another and that would be all the ‘literature’ we need. ‘I saw a bird today.’ ‘Look behind you. Sunset.’ ‘Your shoelace is untied. Tie it, please. I don’t want you to trip.’ ‘Come to my house. We have almond cookies. They’re delicious.’ And so on. Maybe this would’t satisfy anyone but there are days when it would satisfy me. Maybe the notes could be in French. “Je suis … partout …’

Late at night I love to hear the sound of trains. In my boyhood I heard them all through the summer. My mother had a thing for open windows. There was a hand crank that opened the window in my room. I slept with my feet outside the covers. The breeze felt nice.

Here is a story I heard that instantly I thought you would love. Someone told me they saw all these dogs swimming in a pond together. One of the dogs was wearing a small life jacket. She didn’t understand. When the dogs came out of the water, she understood: the dog with the life jacket had only three legs.

True.

Three legs. The three legged dog is a marvel. She sprints in waltz time.

Poetry. Sometimes maybe it should be tossed in the river. Other times I think it would be best if we saved it and held it close and kept it in a quiet place.

I have hardly written anything though I find myself not at all concerned because while some people have told me about how they are rushing around trying to get their poems and manuscripts published I believe what will happen will happen in spite of our best intentions seldom because of. This might be delusion on my part, who knows. When it is fall there will come additional energies.

M-- I hope everything is going well for you. We – by that I mean C-- and I – might visit Vermont in the fall. We must wait, finances are terribly difficult these days. My job pays poorly and I have debts from dental work and automotive repairs that seem to cling forever to our poor factory of a household. Don’t worry though, somehow we’ll weather the storm.

Your friend,

J.

----------------------------------------------

* From an erasure sent to the author by Mary Ruefle.

Workshop Poems [Rejected]

1

I cross the river
because I
can't swim
dry-land
gravel.



2

What happy
ducks we
were, sitting
on a
plate.



3

Q: Why rain? Why
leaves? Why limestone?
Why wild
rose?

A: Fuck off.


4

Cataplux.
The name of a
cat
not yet arrived.

Enjoy.

Thoughts That Came To Me While Staggeringly Inert In Room 306 At The Ambassador Hotel

Yesterday I was like young.
It didn’t seem peculiar to anyone.
The ordinary is a blue cup leaking by a white plate.
It rains. I wander interstate
the inkless vein that fuels.
I think it would be nice to leave this room.

2

At night rain travels northward,
when I by darkness I do not own travel northward too.
Light ever magnifies
the list of days on which it snowed
and those on which it only rained.

3

Others huddle under covers in their beds,
because there is no hill to stand on.
Upturned palms staunch the rain
though seas flood toward the crowing cock:
a bastard I have known
who routinely killed the dreams I stroked
like the brutal farmer does his lovely horses in the field.

4

In darkness the eye is left to sense its limit.
Hands search walls to find a divot.
I pack my eyes
in chloroform beside my broken skis.
Laud bells announce the feast
to ring the skin off some immaculate beast.
It would have been nice to have wasted a life other than my own.

lines from a notebook written in a rented van at night during a thunderstorm in an Ontario provincial park

1

Whose bright idea was rain?
Who invented rain?

Please don't let me get sick.
Though I deserve it.
I won't get sick.

Thunder shakes the van.
My daughter asleep in her tent.
I can barely breathe.

Why won't the rain stop?
Why are you slamming the door?

Waiting for lightning to singe the page.
Lightning. Rain. Thunder.

A man can't sleep.

2

Mr. Nature slept all night in the van.
Now his neck hurts, he is slightly unhinged.
New Day! New Beginning!

3

"How did you sleep?"
"Not bad. And you?"

4

My hands tremble.

5

It is pleasure in the form of ordinary catastrophe.

6

One day you wake to find yourself
remade
into a new bent gull.