9622.net

also:

Actually, the direction the wind is blowing this morning makes my neighborhood smell of gasoline and poultry, but I can dig your vibe anyway, daddy-o.

I should have added: "As always, your local smells may vary." Thanks Crash :D

Your evocative diary reminded me instantly of Wallace Stevens's The Emperor of Ice Cream, don't ask me why. And for this I must thank you, Fes!

The Emperor of Ice-Cream

Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Wallace Stevens

God, isn't it just as powerful and gorgeous as the first time you read it.

Lacking the three brass knobs, posteur...

I walked all the way to Union Fucking Square yesterday in hopes of sampling a delicacy called "Coca-Cola Cake." When I got there I was informed that the chef had quit and taken the recipe with him.

This is an injustice. Thankfully they did have beer.

It's a highly secret recipe, Jon, but try this.

I don't cook, migs, that would take time away from drinking and spinning records.

Psst...jon, maybe if you're really nice to pips, she'd make the cake for you.

My dear departed uncle would have had a conniption at the thought of Coca-Cola cake. He was a firm believer in keeping Coca-Cola and sweet foods separate. In fact, if one were to propose to him that he might enjoy a Coca-Cola with a sweet snack, he could get downright hostile.

He was an odd man.

When at the dentist a few weeks ago, I was watching the food channel, and this old plump lady was swearing by coke as a marinade for ham. mix coke with some apricot preserves, slather on ham.

Pips works much longer and much harder than I do. Plus she's going to school and since she makes more money than I do she pays most of the bills.

If I said I wanted her to bake me a cake, you'd probably find my body on the front lawn with a mouse cord around my neck, a coke bottle in my eye socket and a spatula up my ass.

you mean, like last Friday?

I'm not a big poetry guy, but...

in Just-
--------
in Just- 
spring       when the world is mud- 
luscious the little 
lame baloonman 

whistles       far       and wee 

and eddieandbill come 
running from marbles and 
piracies and it's 
spring 

when the world is puddle-wonderful 

the queer 
old baloonman whistles 
far       and         wee 
and bettyandisbel come dancing 

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and 

it's 
spring 
and 

      the 

              goat-footed 

baloonMan       whistles 
far 
and 
wee 
--ee cummings

And, lest you think I'm not a curmudgeon. Here's a little something for balance:

Complete Destruction
---------------------
It was an icy day.
We buried the cat,
then took her box
and set fire to it
in the back yard.
Those fleas that escaped
earth and fire
died by the cold.

--William Carlos Williams

Lupo! That is my favorite poem in the whole world!

How did you know?

Oh, the cummings.

Wait, this is getting worse. Nebbermind!

"when the world is puddle-wonderful" is one of my all time favorite cummings lines.

(Number one all-time favorite? "nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands")

Fes, although they'll be playing the Twins and not the Yankees, the Detroit Tigers open their season at home on March 31 -- just over two weeks.

We had four inches of snow yesterday. I can almost guarantee that there will be low clouds, and that if the infield cracks, it'll be because it's frozen over.

I love when eddieandbill come / running from marbles and / piracies

Number one all-time favorite? "nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands"

Quoted by Barbara Hershey in Hannah and Her Sisters.

I once wrote 40 pages about this one:

Jabberwocky
-----------
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
   Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
   And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
   The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
   The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
   Long time the manxome foe he sought --
So rested he by the Tumtum tree.
   And stood awhile in thought.

And as in uffish thought he stood,
   The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came wiffling through the tulgey wood,
   And burbled as it came!
One, two! One, two! And through and through
   The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
   He went galumphing back.

"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
   Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
   He chortled in his joy.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
   Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
   And the mome raths outgrabe.

--Lewis Carroll

This is fun!

Morning at the Window
---------------------
They are rattling breakfast plates in basement kitchens,
And along the trampled edges of the street
I am aware of the damp souls of housemaids
Sprouting despondently at area gates.

The brown waves of fog toss up to me
Twisted faces from the bottom of the street,
And tear from a passer-by with muddy skirts
An aimless smile that hovers in the air
And vanishes along the level of the roofs.

--TS Elilot

"Fortunately, however, I should prefer to make almost anything else, including locomotives and roses. It is with roses and locomotives (not to mention acrobats Spring electricity Coney Island the 4th of July the eyes of mice and Niagara Falls) that my "poems" are competing."

"the question 'who am I?' is answered by what I write, I become my writing."

Dying
------
I heard a fly buzz when I died;
The stillness round my form
Was like the stillness in the air
Between the heaves of storm.

The eyes beside had wrung them dry,
And breaths were gathering sure
For that last onset, when the king
Be witnessed in his power.

I willed my keepsakes, signed away
What portion of me I
Could make assignable, -- and then
There interposed a fly,

With blue, uncertain, stumbling buzz,
Between the light and me;
And then the windows failed, and then
I could not see to see.

--Emily Dickinson

(that was ee cummings)

To ----
------------
One word is too often profaned
   For me to profane it,
One feeling too falsely disdained
   For thee to disdain it;
One hope is too like despair
   For prudence to smother,
And pity from thee more dear
   Than that from another.

I can give not what men call love,
   But wilt thou accept not
The worship the heart lifts above
   And the Heavens reject not,--
The desire of the moth for the star,
   Of the night for the morrow,
The devotion to something afar
   From the sphere of our sorrow?

--Percy Bysshe Shelley

post

Migs already posted a Stevens poem, so I won't post "Anecdote of a Jar", one of my favorite poems ever (and incidentally the best explication of lawn ornaments that I know..)

So, instead I'll post another of my favorite poems, Anthony Hecht's "The Dover Bitch: A Criticism of Life." (It's a response to Matthew Arnold's deeply Victorian "Dover Beach", which you prob'ly should read before reading this.)

So there stood Matthew Arnold and this girl
With the cliffs of England crumbling away behind them,
And he said to her, "Try to be true to me,
And I'll do the same for you, for things are bad
All over, etc., etc."
Well now, I knew this girl. It's true she had read
Sophocles in a fairly good translation
And caught that bitter allusion to the sea,
But all the time he was talking she had in mind
the notion of what his whiskers would feel like
On the back of her neck. She told me later on
That after a while she got to looking out
At the lights across the channel, and really felt sad,
Thinking of all the wine and enormous beds
And blandishments in French and the perfumes.
And then she got really angry. To have been brought
All the way down from London, and then be addressed
As sort of a mournful cosmic last resort
Is really tough on a girl, and she was pretty.
Anyway, she watched him pace the room
and finger his watch-chain and seem to sweat a bit,
And then she said one or two unprintable things.
But you mustn't judge her by that. What I mean to say is,
She's really all right. I still see her once in a while
And she always treats me right. We have a drink
And I give her a good time, and perhaps it's a year
Before I see her again, but there she is,
Running to fat, but dependable as they come,
And sometimes I bring her a bottle of Nuit d'Amour.

I've always liked Siegfried Sassoon:

Does it matter?—losing your legs?...
For people will always be kind,
And you need not show that you mind
When the others come in after hunting
To gobble their muffins and eggs.

Does it matter ?—losing your sight?...
There's such splendid work for the blind;
And people will always be kind,
As you sit on the terrace remembering
And turning your face to the light.

Do they matter?—those dreams from the pit?...
You can drink and forget and be glad,
And people won't say that you're mad;
For they'll know you've fought for your country
And no one will worry a bit.

the lesson of the moth

i was talking to a moth
the other evening
he was trying to break into
an electric light bulb
and fry himself on the wires

why do you fellows
pull this stunt i asked him
because it is the conventional
thing for moths or why
if that had been an uncovered
candle instead of an electric
light bulb you would
now be a small unsightly cinder
have you no sense

plenty of it he answered
but at times we get tired
of using it
we get bored with the routine
and crave beauty
and excitement
fire is beautiful
and we know that if we get
too close it will kill us
but what does that matter
it is better to be happy
for a moment
and be burned up with beauty
than to live a long time
and be bored all the while
so we wad all our life up
into one little roll
and then we shoot the roll
that is what life is for
it is better to be a part of beauty
for one instant and then cease to
exist than to exist forever
and never be a part of beauty
our attitude toward life
is come easy go easy
we are like human beings
used to be before they became
too civilized to enjoy themselves

and before i could argue him
out of his philosophy
he went and immolated himself
on a patent cigar lighter
i do not agree with him
myself i would rather have
half the happiness and twice
the longevity

but at the same time i wish
there was something i wanted
as badly as he wanted to fry himself

archy

-- Don Marquis

Archy, for those who don't know, is a cockroach with the soul of a poet. He and Mehitabel, an alley cat, have many adventures which Archy then records in poetry on a rusty typewriter for Don Marquis. The best collections of Archy and Mehitabel have illustrations by George Herriman, master artist and genius behind Krazy Kat.

"Hare, Mr. Hare,
What is it that makes you hop?"
"I see the moon of the fifteenth night
And then I hop
Hoppety Hoppety
Hop hop hop."

-traditional japanese children's song

(hey fez, are you from St. Louis? I'm presently stuck in that shithole myself...)

jpoulous's Dickinson poem made me think of this one by Billy Collins:

"Taking Off
Emily Dickinson's
Clothes"

First, her tippet made of tulle,
easily lifted off her shoulders and laid
on the back of a wooden chair.
And her bonnet,
the bow undone with a light forward pull.

Then the long white dress, a more
complicated matter with mother-of-pearl
buttons down the back,
so tiny and numerous that it takes forever
before my hands can part the fabric,
like a swimmer's dividing water,
and slip inside.

You will want to know
that she was standing
by an open window in an upstairs bedroom,
motionless, a little wide-eyed,
looking out at the orchard below,
the white dress puddled at her feet
on the wide-board, hardwood floor.

The complexity of women's undergarments
in nineteenth-century America
is not to be waved off,
and I proceeded like a polar explorer
through clips, clasps, and moorings,
catches, straps, and whalebone stays,
sailing toward the iceberg of her nakedness.

Later, I wrote in a notebook
it was like riding a swan into the night,
but, of course, I cannot tell you everything –
the way she closed her eyes to the orchard,
how her hair tumbled free of its pins,
how there were sudden dashes
whenever we spoke.

What I can tell you is
it was terribly quiet in Amherst
that Sabbath afternoon,
nothing but a carriage passing the house,
a fly buzzing in a windowpane.

So I could plainly hear her inhale
when I undid the very top
hook-and-eye fastener of her corset

and I could hear her sigh when finally it was unloosed,
the way some readers sigh when they realize
that Hope has feathers,
that reason is a plank,
that life is a loaded gun
that looks right at you with a yellow eye.

(hey fez, are you from St. Louis? I'm presently stuck in that shithole myself...)

yep. up for lunch next week sometime?

Overheard

A tree with shallow roots,
she said, I'm not sure what they're called,
but I want a tree with shallow roots.
And the gardener walked away
with the nurseryman
to find something that would bloom
without attachment.
I thought, what the hell.
Who really wants commitment
anyway?

(by me.)

The book on my bed lies undisturbed.
A glass sits sweating on the shelf.
Even so, I have set you aside.

The book on my bed lies undisturbed.
A glass sits sweating on the shelf.
Even so, I have set you aside.

fecking doublepost is icumen in...

Love without hope, as when the young bird-catcher
Swept off his tall hat to the Squire's own daughter,
So let the imprisoned larks escape and fly
Singing about her head, as she rode by.

^ Robert Graves

this one makes me feel less alone with the crap I have to deal with:

Robert Frost's "The Armful"

For every parcel I stoop down to seize
I lose some other off my arms and knees,
And the whole pile is slipping, bottles, buns,
Extremes too hard to comprehend at. once
Yet nothing I should care to leave behind.
With all I have to hold with hand and mind
And heart, if need be, I will do my best.
To keep their building balanced at my breast.
I crouch down to prevent them as they fall;
Then sit down in the middle of them all.
I had to drop the armful in the road
And try to stack them in a better load.

How 'bout some limericks?

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