Waking up early on the first day of summer
because my back hurts from sitting in an office chair,
my windows stream five a.m. grey, murky sun
and I settle in to start doing accounting entries,
using the remote technology that promises freedom.
Oddly Specific
We may sometimes think the ones who died are the fortunate ones,
the deputy director of the regional Veteran’s Administration center
said this afternoon, to a small crowd assembled
under blue polyester awnings,
half of which was the volunteer concert band I was in.
The other half I suspected were spouses or perhaps even children
grown middle-aged themselves waiting for their fathers
to come back home from the war
with heart disease, cancer. And the stroke
of three o’clock found us standing in silence
while the local reporters, strangely beautiful and young
literally ran around with cameras to get the wreath-laying
and my friend playing taps into the paper
like they do every year to remember.
Saul, who was also known as Paul
But Saul, who was also known as Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, fixed his gaze on him, and said, “You who are full of all deceit and fraud, you son of the devil, you enemy of all righteousness, will you not cease to make crooked the straight ways of the Lord? Now, behold, the hand of the Lord is upon you, and you will be blind and not see the sun for a time.” – Acts 13:9-11
This was at least his second transformation
and I admire the way Luke buried it in the moment
the sun might have been bright in Paphos
Raw Material
A customer tries to buy shirts with “a boiled cotton scent that reminds him of his grandmother.”
A famed conductor agrees to create a music festival with definite Aryan overtones, I can see from the poster for it that the clarinet mouthpieces they use are impossible to play. I am horrified by the fact that the orchestra would do this. The conductor assures me privately that the project is like “subtly digging an obnoxious guest you have in your own home.”
I wake up wondering if these two things, and an even vaguer memory of another transaction where I stand wondering if I’ve already paid, or should pay, for something I’m not even sure I still have, have any threads of connection I could braid into some kind of poem.
I lay awake wondering if I can make it from the bed to the point of writing it down without losing it all, like carrying a handful of oil.
Dancing about Architecture
“Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.”
– Martin Mull(?)
At first, we’re told, guttural cries
were what passed for expression.
Passed is not the right word, but professional
critics often rule out categories, deny
expression after the fact, and have tried,
from Mozart to Schoenberg, to call attention
to the various sins against form, the tension
between the old skins and new wine.
Schoenberg, for his part, had no use
for laws that came after the fact,
said they burst under special kinds
of tests — exceptions which make us loosen
rules disprove their need. He backed
off to be free of a tonal bind.
In the Details
We played Mahler’s First Symphony tonight
in a civic orchestra sort of way
but it gave aging rich women a place to
go in their wraps and
my mother-in-law sat with my wife and
said she saw horses and did ‘three-legged-dances.’
There are so many moving parts,
I said. The work has defied the best
orchestra’s efforts to play it, and
to play it, not listen to it, is to
count measures of rest after rest
and wait to come in
wait to come in.
The clarinet part is to sound
like a cuckoo and the conductor
makes crazy faces to inspire you
while his back is turned
to the audience.
The Dream of Uncle Cleo
In my dream, Uncle Cleo stands in his dead brother’s home
and calls suddenly for prayer. “When we die, let us die quickly,
oh Lord, but let us be what we can in the meantime.”
My brother loudly says “amen,” and adds
“I’m having trouble with that ‘be what we can,’ myself.”
Uncle Cleo keeps on in that calm preacher’s voice of his
about our trip, says “there’s no use to leave before daylight.”
In reality, Uncle Cleo died old of diabetes and drink,
a few body parts at a time until his final day at a VA hospital.
I never heard him pray, but he really had that preacher’s voice.
He knew what it was to ‘be what he could,’ having been a sailor,
a shoe salesman, a drinker. He knew what it was to find himself
married on a drunken weekend. His brother didn’t live like this.
The drunken marriage didn’t last the weekend, but there was
another woman who stayed with him through many divorces,
including their own.
Only Connect
“Only connect.” – E.M. Forster, Howard’s End
So I spent a long time asking
what was important and necessary
about buying machines to have friendships with
until I realized they were all for making connections.
Cars, baritone saxophones, this iPad that keeps
making an ostentatious entrance, none of it
matters without someone to complete the chord,
to meet you in the middle.
My Cat Has Been Put Out
and she’s pretty pissed off.
The vet said something unkind about her weight
and now she’s put out about it every day.
My cat has been put out
and she’s stalking every door,
peering inside as I work from home
or rather, write poetry about it. Continue reading “My Cat Has Been Put Out”
I’ve realized it’s not hard
I’ve realized it’s not hard
just impossible
and when I walk out on a tightrope
tired from living at least two lives
I’m bound to look down at the net.
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