when Pablo Neruda asked:
"what is water like in the stars?"
I thought: "maybe the great poet's on tilt this morning."
a question so uniquely strange that I didn’t bother to be curious.
I just went on my way living life between
someone's microscope and someone's telescope,
between the diners and priests, between the girls and women,
sometimes learning on the march.
there are forms of water in and circling the stars.
this is water not nearly as rare as the liquid running
from our kitchen faucets.
this is water in its cosmological enterprise.
but Neruda asked the question during the time
when few, if any in the know thought it reasonable.
water in the stars?
the question is found in Neruda’s: “Through a closed mouth the flies enter"
pages 249 to 251 in the volume: “Extravagaria”.
Google the title and save money.
also of interest is the question: “When did the lemons learn
the same laws as the sun?"
there are rare confections between the pages of 249 and 251.
or one could say, a world.
death is not an option.
It follows me from room to room
close enough to be detected.
hints of a breeze
where there should be no breeze.
doilies flutter on the armrests.
the temperature drops.
I’m sneezing more often.
dead friends enter my dreams
announcing themselves as couriers
of the afterlife.
one guy from high school admonished
me for cheating on a test because
he was smatter than me.
so I cheated. why come at me now?
I feel like I don’t belong.
I feel like the toilet in the Kramden’s cold-water
flat on Chauncey street which is never seen.
I mean, it’s got to be in there.
I mean, so many episodes and not one audible flush?
jesus christ! what the fuck!
so I’m erasing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation
from the form which dictates my preferences.
who knows who’ll do it? I don’t. fuck that.
a brief autobiographical extract posted before it's too late
I have a son.
an only child.
he wasn't atomized into existence
or born of a virgin mother.
he hasn’t suffered the cruelties of life. but--
that is–– not that I've noticed.
what else...oh, yes.
he looks like me during the time
when I was pretty.
he's childless, and as far as I'm told
he wants it that way.
I don't question his reasoning.
his girlfriend is as beautiful as mine
during the time when we were pretty.
that would be his mother.
this brief autobiographical extract is posted before it's too late.
When does the Nobel Peace Prize become something else
Delcy,
Well, what the hell.
Share your Prize if you dare believe
it would remain half yours for long.
But it won’t matter.
It’ll be a cheeseburger.
Let him eat it. Watch him digest it
through his wormy intestines.
Do what you have to do
as you face a strongman who
would squash you like a grape
at the hint of perceived non-compliance.
But I understand.
I wouldn't fare any better.
survival counts for something.
But when he jerks-off at night
from his side of the king-size bed
just maybe, Delcy, he’ll be thinking of you.
in the morning I was told
I was drunk last night
that I fell from the car’s
open door into the gutter
in front of my house
that I cursed my station in life
that my friends laughed
rather to lend a hand and
it rained an hour before the fall
and I was drenched with rainwater
and whatever the gutter surrendered
to my pants, which stuck there
as the flow down the artery looked like
a vein filled with puss and other yucky shit.
I threw-up making more of a mess
struggled to gain my balance, tripped
over the curbstone and landed
on the little grassy strip
in front of the mailbox.
that’s where I woke up.
that’s when I was told that
I was drunk last night
by someone I don’t know or
at least don’t remember, just happy
to be among the living.
examining the mail from the mailbox
I questioned my desire to keep living.
1953 / Saturday and a man sits at the table waiting for the bills to come in the mail
mid-afternoon and the kitchen table is set.
something is placed in the middle of the table.
could be anything as long as it’s something placed in the middle.
an empty vase. a vase with pussy willows.
something borrowed from the parlor. a figurine.
something of an afterthought. a bowl from the pantry.
and at the edge of the table a man waits for the mail.
he smokes a cigarette. could be Lucky Strike, could be Chesterfield.
an ashtray smudged with an ash-burned image of “the old man in the mountain”
a souvenir from New Hampshire, sits upon the table and at the edge, the man
smokes another one, could be Camel, waiting for the bills to come in the mail.
vignette
1953 / Saturday and a man sits at the table waiting for the bills to come in the mail
mid-afternoon and the kitchen table is set.
something is placed in the middle of the table.
could be anything as long as it’s something placed in the middle.
an empty vase. a vase with pussy willows.
something borrowed from the parlor. a figurine.
something of an afterthought. a bowl from the pantry.
and at the edge of the table a man waits for the mail.
he smokes a cigarette. could be Lucky Strike, could be Chesterfield.
an ashtray smudged with an ash-burned image of “the old man in the mountain”
a souvenir from New Hampshire, sits upon the table and at the edge, the man
smokes another one, could be Camel, waiting for the bills to come in the mail.
vignette
