2 Light Poems

36TH LIGHT POEM: IN MEMORIAM BUSTER KEATON --
4:50-6:18 A.M. SAT 1 JAN. 1972

1

As a mad scientist
Buster lights a Bunsen-burner flame
that starts a series of processes
that eventually releases The Monster

As an Undertaker
Buster lights a Bunsen-burner flame
that starts a series of processes
that awakens a drunk who was about to be buried as a corpse

As a Muscovite
Buster lights a sisal wick in a sesame-seed-oil lamp
that suddenly lights a mystical orgy
officiated over by Rasputin

As a boater
Buster beats a cascade by floating out beyond its edge
borne by a balloon
lit by a wintry sun

As an Unwilling Passenger on a Drifting Liner
Buster the Millionaire & his rich Girl Friend
learn to cope Alone Without Servants
when forced to rely on the light of their Upper-Class Intellects

As a Worker
Buster arouses the Compassion of the Nation
in whose light the Corporations
sell themselves to their Workers

As a Key Man
Buster carries around with him
an enormous bunch of keys
lighting the way with a Keats lamp

As a Beatnik
Buster meditates in a Redwood forest
seated where the Selenic light
first falls at Moonrise

As a Leaf-&-Feather Gatherer
Buster Means Well but bugs everyone in the Park
spearing the ladies' hats & the picnickers' salads
in featureless Hollywood Light of the century's first quarter

As William Butler Yeats
Buster addresses an irate Irish crowd
that thinks that Poetry makes Nothing Happen
but lets itself be bathed by its Truthful Light

As a Cannoneer
Buster explodes his own ship's magazine
treads water in Gunpowder Light at a safe distance
& blushes in embarrassment at his Clumsiness

As a Violinist
Buster surpasses Paganini
until Boston-Concert-Hall Light
Poisons him with Love for a Proper Bostonian Maiden

2

Spirit of Buster Keaton
if you survive as yourself
receive Please our honor & praise
you conscientious Workman

Hard-working Buster Keaton
when you arouse the laughter of children
as you live in Projector Light
Your Karmic Residue dissolves in Joyous Shouts




58TH LIGHT POEM: FOR ANNE TARDOS -- 19 MARCH 1979

I know when I've fallen in love I start to write love songs
Love's actinism turns nineteens to words & thoughts in love songs
as your "A" & the date made "actinism" enter this love song

Also I seem to start dropping punctuation
My need for punctuation lessens like some people's need for sleep
My need for sleep lessens too but later I fall on my face
Lack of punctuation doesn't catch up with me like lack of sleep
It doesn't make me fall on my face

So bright the near noon light the toy photometer twirls in
the sunlight slanting in from southeast thru the southwest window
the stronger the light the faster the light motor turns
diamond vanes' black sides absorb white sides radiate photons
See it go

A "42" draws the northern lights into the song
as yesterday into the Taggart Light Poem twice they were drawn
as "aurora borealis" & "aurora" by "A"'s & by numbers
There they seemed eery & threatening Here they seem hopeful
as they seemed when last I saw them over the Gulf of St. Lawrence
cold euphoric after making love wondering
at swirling curtains & sudden billows lighting the sky northwest

I remember their evanescent light as neutral or bluish white
I remember the possibility of yellow the improbability of red
not like Bearsville's rose & blood sky twenty-five years before
Now these memories mingled with pictures' descriptions'
project on inward skies idiosyncratic northern lights
that only exist while I'm writing these lines for Anne
Even the next time I read them the lights they arouse will be different

Nineteen sheds a tranquil light on our love song thru your "T"
Our love's tranquil light revealed by 19 & by T
is turned by 15 to an aureole tipping an "A"
The "A" becomes your face The aureole grows

Reducence from my face glows back on yours

A telephone bell can deflect & dissipate my light
The deflected light is lost to poem & person
I turn my telephone off these days to help ordinary light breed poems

The sun is so bright on my desk now except on the typewriter keys
that there's no need for the light of the student lamp placed to
shine on the paper

But now five hours later the lamp's the only light
& I begin the poem's "astrological" section

II

Acetylene light may be what Virgo needs to see the "pattern
except that for him this is something" he will
only acknowledge if it can be seen in natural light

Can we gain new light from astrology that ubiquitous superstition
You Sagittarius Woman Me Virgo Man
What "can happen between them is a" mazing
a dizzying a stupefying or dazing a crazing
a great perplexing bewildering amazing
forming a maze of something or making it intricate
being bewildered wandering as in a maze
What has happened between them is amazing

What is happening between us is amazing
more intense & vivid than electric arc light tremendous light
brighter than acetylene light friendly as reading lamp light

"But a young Sagit-
tarian need have no qualms about taking on a
man considerably her senior if he is a "Virgo"
Rand's random digits underline our case
in this lovely silly optimistic sentence

We've been living I think in a kind of drowning light

"He reaches the age of forty At anything less than that age
he is not even a possible for a Sagittarius"
Me Virgo Man You Sagittarius Woman
Orgone radiation flimmers between us
our curious safety light

"What can happen between them is superb
Something he has spent half his life dreaming about
At last it has come true" O ingratiating
astrological light may you never prove false
even to one who has often decried you as no light
but superstitious darkness natural light would dispel
or the electric arc light of empirical science

The way I'm writing this poem's like using
trichromatic artificial radiance
not as decorative light in place of
ordinary solar radiation as you photographers do

Before I was forty "not even a possible for a Sagittarius"
now I'm sixteen over the line & safe with you

"Her but a young Sagittarian need have" none
"qualms" have no basis
Are we dreaming Is this Virgo Man still dreaming
as "he has spent half his life" they say "dreaming"
"Sagittarian & Virgo"
"The pattern is perfect"
The poem is over

19-20 March 1979
New York

-- Jackson Mac Low

He Cannot Have Been Pleased Today to Hear That (Stein 55)

He cannot have been pleased today to hear her accidentally mention that.

Although she is little Carrie is forty. Ask for rubber in your prayers. They are doubles but are they brothers.

Whoever hears plaster dry listens best. It was said that the country might have had better kinds of fire if it hadn’t won that prize. Their hundred offspring were promised a whole new arrangement. Another disappointed rebellion.

Of all who were there yesterday who will be exclaiming in that place today. I heard the door. It has been shown that we men make dirt. Are we willing to hear it stopped. England and age loaned decision a train. Gradually he comes to believe no one. She does either nothing or little.

He said he’d undergone the same decrease of conscience after considering their stammering thinking. Please harness another one. He had a hundred. Did the designer understand. Weren’t you satisfactorily kind. Under an obligation to get the shapes into certain places what place did you mention as higher. He meant the knives entailed reparations. It has been found that women hear best. Can a man wait now. Julian mentioned the separate introductions. Weren’t you yourselves surprised.

Little ones believe me. This cannot be going on. Had you wanted to you couldn’t have chosen to carry the unavoidable but you did so accidentally. Are the brothers there. Whether they went there or not they doubled the plaster. Those who hear best are hopefully pleasant. That was the end but I prefer the beginning. Why should that other one stammer. They’re ordinarily together. When another drafts the recipe for bread there please tell me whether this furthers still another. What was the purpose of that resumption of bribery. A hundred offspring sprang from closets in another disappointed rebellion. Their higher exclamations were meant to call the wealthy to resemble them by doing what they did. These times principally carry with them undertakings hastening decisions. In the beginning everybody overflowed. There were fifty opportunities for the English to disappoint the rebellion. Exclaiming that higher meant wealthier the callers resembled doers. Undertakings in these times are principally fastened to decisions.

Whether near or far the rest rest. Anybody may accidentally become necessary. We believe bread becomes thinking. Does this sound like an accident. He accidentally changes. He went were the front lamps do little. Though he looked he had need of intuition to choose among the women. They made believe their faces looked that way. Please can’t we hurry to see what causes that resemblance. When we have seen whether they carry things faster will we have wanted to listen. I know I am mud. He’s gentle to fish. Hot or cool she would deny that. Promise you’ll leave out the introductions. Separate when this changes. He did the tired thing. Had any other needed harnessing. The designer did. Am I to understand you made her leave instead. Woody the baker was in an unexpected bed. He never said that we said either that he was displeased or that he was pleased. Credit another horse’s straps’ goodness. Whether reparation is everything or not this was harnessing. When we have met will we remember the rest of this. Such splendid running. Would everybody believe there was any chance that they wanted her to leave. Never revise her accidentally. They were annoyed when they saw what higher winning meant. Do it by widening it.

She was not lonesome despite the expenses of emigration. When they got the maps together they didn’t try to notice what he’d said they’d have to remember. All my toys were wonderful. Carving the splendid coal the bribed one exclaimed that Henner’s picture would be worth a hundred of his offspring. He was a designer and he did understand. He said you’ve not been satisfactorily careful. That very neglect was forgotten. Away with what you mean to say. Don’t only use cement. Why would emigration stand as the better measure. He recommended that he be a minister. The decision to loan away the fork was greeted with language such as no one would have believed. They rendered it accidentally. Had another believed in another there’s a chance that still another would have been displeased. It disappointed forty that Carrie was so little although many prayers were said for her. The number of rubber wheels was lessening in that place. Are those brothers the reason. He stopped his gentle plastering.

Ordinarily they would try everything. Pray that this harnessing be an introduction to toys. So far toys may be for anybody. He means that morning is the time to express emotion. Hundreds asked her age and what would become of her. He was trained to make decisions about loans and doesn’t believe anyone. Gradually they came to be doing very little. He said they’d undergo the same decrease of conscience. She considered thinking about it after stammering Please. To you harnessing another hundred was not at all satisfactory. The designer understood that.

-- Jackson Mac Low

5 Haiku

Winter bee, crawls out from the dust in the corner.

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Spring neighbor, even ill in bed, I polish my nails.

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Wishing and wanting to see you, I step on the thin ice.

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Love oracle, reading in the light of the spring snow.

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now the trip is over -- my summer holidays start their B-side

________________________________________________

-- Mayuzumi Madoka

Miu Miu's Saturday Night Function & Clarinet Lament

o ya aubade aubade o boy o ya so many o's all in a row feeling of course's important today for Miu Miu (opened mouth) (that's Barney Bigard playing in the background, delicious) a feeling not unlike dragging dried red roses brittle and black over the smooth, albeit distressed in the corners, hardwood parquet floors of Mason's heart the blackguard consumes her even as he's gone. Taste: acidic steely firm taut. Where: in the back-bar crevice of her normally stoney emotions. Ultra close-up: inside of Miu Miu's open mouth breath glistening the lingering taste of Mason: steely wine. Miu Miu's feeling as she lip licks her memory: he eats green apples in the starlight. with salt. touching the pad of her index finger with the pad of her thumb smooth she came to him with a proposition: Saturday Night Function strut New Orleans funeral march walkin'-to-the-cemetery tempo clarinet leads the way, somber piano solo somber low impassioned cries. He's plenty good-looking enough why does he have to want to look like Marcus Schenkenberg. Smoothly smoothly urbane courteous debonair smoothly shyly his hair combed back expediting his sweat drench & dulcet mellow lyrically raucous hand fingering o that Mason does do well liquidly calling out lavishly not saying a word languidly fingers shoulder tickle lovely lovingly mmmmm hard pressed to forget last nights lasting Mood Indigo night long night long dark night a few stars round midnight lasting melodies Miu Miu harmonizes now with considerate adulation and considerable memory for Mason envisions him a clarinet solo he came to me (she relishes) with a proposition like spilled music tasting like lilac wine snazzy keen where my fingers play through his sweat drenched hair having had having him then having him again: time propulsive, agile improvisation, engaging bracing joie de vivre that keeps you coming back for more 5 stars - top rating, that Mason that Saturday Night Function that tap root that Am I Blue soft and plaintive that plaintive soft cry that solo that hot white jazz convulsion. yum: hmmm Miu Miu mulls: Mason as a Clarinet. she considers painting. Miu Miu ever the hungry ghost:


The clarinet has a distinctive liquid tone, resulting from the shape of the bore, whose characteristics vary between its three registers: the chalumeau (low), clarion or clarino (middle), and altissimo (high). Of all the wind instruments the clarinet has the widest compass, which is showcased in much wind band and orchestral writing. Additionally, improvements made to the fingering systems of the clarinet over time have enabled the instrument to be very agile; there are few restrictions to what it is able to play.



The bass clarinet has a characteristically deep mellow tone. It is often only used in large bands and contemporary orchestral pieces. The alto clarinet is rare to be found in other than a concert band. Its range is slightly higher than that of a bass clarinet, yet still much lower than the common B flat clarinet. The B flat clarinet is a very common band, orchestra, chamber music, and solo instrument. The tone quality varies greatly with the musician, the music, the style of clarinet, the reed, and humidity. The German clarinet generally has a dark, greenish tone quality. In contrast, the French clarinet, because of impressionable french composers, is more bright and lively -- some might even say shrill. In between, the modern American clarinet has tone qualities borrowed from both the French and the German clarinets.

Only a semitone below the B flat clarinet is the A clarinet. Much of orchestral and chamber repetoire is composed originally for A clarinet. Some people find the sound of the A clarinet to be just a little more rich and mysterious than a B flat, though the difference is small. Today, the chief use of an A clarinet is to make the key signature of a piece simpler. An E flat clarinet, about eighteen inches (45cm) long, is hardly as warm as the A clarinet. Many contemporary musicians write band music using the E flat clarinet. It is looked upon as the piccolo of clarinets, with its high and very bright tone.



Beginning clarinetists often choose soft reeds - 2 to 2 1/2. Jazz clarinetists often remain on softer reeds, as the soft reeds are easy for bending pitch. However, most classical musicians work their way up the reed size as their embouchures strengthen. The benefit of a harder reed is a sturdy, round tone. It takes many years of practice to strengthen your embouchure, but your tone depends on it. Within a few years of playing, the corners of your mouth will be strong enough to keep the air flowing in a very narrow, cylindrical form.

To practice controlling your air, light a candle, and hold it far from your face. Then, open your mouth only slightly, keep the corners of your mouth in, to make a very tight O shape. Then, take a deep breath from your diaphragm and blow at the candle. See how far away you can hold it and still blow it out. This gain of control will concentrate your air flow and round your tone in the most beautiful way possible.



Range

All clarinets, except for the C clarinet, are transposing instruments, meaning that the sounding and written pitches differ. For a standard B♭ clarinet, the range stretches from the D below middle C, to around the F two and half octaves above middle C, although the top of the range is not well defined. Being a B♭ insturment, the written range is a tone higher. An A clarinet has the same written range, and consequently can get a semitone lower. All clarinets have nominally the same written range, so a bass clarinet operates an octave lower, and an E♭ clarinet operates a fifth higher than a B♭ clarinet. Generally, the lower clarinets are able to produce higher 'fingered' pitches than the small clarinets. This gives the bass clarinet a useable range of almost five octaves (beginning at low Bb two octaves and one tone below middle C) and the contra-alto and contra-bass clarinets perhaps more, but again these upper limits are subject to many variables.

The range of a clarinet can be divided into three main sections, known as 'registers'. The bottom octave and a half (from written E below middle C to the B♭ above middle C) is known as the 'chalumeau register', of which the top fourth contains what are known as the 'throat notes'. Good tone in the 'throat notes' takes great skill. The middle section is called the 'clarion register', which spans just over an octave (from written B above middle C, to the C two octaves above middle C). The top section is called the 'altissimo register', which starts with the (written) C# two octaves above middle C and upwards without a definite upper limit, though anything beyond the C above this can be considered quite extreme. The highest notes in the altissimo register are generally used only rarely, to achieve particular dramatic or showy effects, as in Dixieland performance. Beginners often discover these notes quite by accident; playing them deliberately and well requires many years of practice.


Construction and acoustics

Professional clarinets are usually made from African hardwood, often grenadilla or (rarely) Honduran rosewood. One major manufacturer makes professional clarinets from a composite mixture of plastic resin and wood chips — such instruments are less affected by humidity, but are heavier than the equivalent wood instrument. Student instruments are usually composite or plastic resin, commonly "resonite", an ABS resin. Some parts are sometimes made of ebonite. The instrument uses a single wooden (sometimes "fiber" or plastic) reed which is held in the mouth by the player. Vibrating the reed produces the instrument's sound.



The body is equipped with a complicated set of seven tone holes (six front, one back) and 17 keys which allow the full musical scale to be produced. The most common system of keys was named the Boehm System by its designer Hyacinthe Klosé in honour of the flute designer Theobald Boehm, but it is not the same as the Boehm System used on flutes. The other main system of keys is called the Oehler system and is used only in Germany and Austria (see History).

The hollow bore inside the instrument has a basically cylindrical shape, being roughly the same diameter for most of the length of the tube. There is a subtle hourglass shape, with its thinnest part at the junction between the upper and lower joint. This hourglass figure is not visible to the naked eye, but helps in the resonance of the sound. The diameter of the bore affects characteristics such as the stability of the pitch of a given note, or, conversely, the ability with which a note can be 'bent' in the manner required in jazz and other styles of music. The bell is at the bottom of the instrument and flares out to spread the tone evenly.

A clarinetist moves between registers through use of the register key, or speaker key. The fixed reed and fairly uniform diameter of the clarinet give the instrument the configuration of a stopped pipe in which the register key, when pressed, causes the clarinet to produce the note a twelfth higher. This interval corresponds to the third harmonic, whereas most other woodwinds go up to the second harmonic, an octave higher, when the register key is pressed. The fifth and seventh harmonics are also available to skilled players, sounding a further sixth and fourth higher respectively.

The highest notes on a clarinet can have a piercing quality and can be difficult to tune precisely. Different individual instruments can be expected to play differently in this respect. This becomes critical if a number of instruments are required to play a high part in unison. Fortunately for audiences, disciplined players can use a variety of fingerings to introduce slight variations into the pitch of these higher notes. It is also common for high melody parts to be split into close harmony to avoid this issue.

The parts that make up a clarinet are as follows (description follows the illustration from left to right):

The reed is attached to the mouthpiece by the ligature, and the whole assembly is held in the player’s mouth, with the reed on the underside of the mouthpiece, pressing against the player's bottom lip. The formation of the mouth around the mouthpiece and reed is called the embouchure.



Next is the short barrel; this part of the instrument may be extended in order to fine-tune the clarinet. As the pitch of the clarinet is fairly temperature sensitive some instruments have interchangeable barrels whose lengths vary very slightly. Some performers employ a single barrel with a thumbwheel that enables the barrel length to be altered on the fly.

The main body of the clarinet is divided (except in the case of the E♭ soprano clarinet) into the upper joint whose holes and most keys are operated by the left hand, and the lower joint with holes and most keys operated by the right hand. The left thumb operates both a sound hole and the register key. The cluster of keys in the middle of the illustration are known as the trill keys and are operated by the right hand. These give the player alternative fingerings which make it easy to play ornaments and trills that would otherwise be awkward. The entire weight of the instrument is supported by the right thumb behind the lower joint on what is misleadingly called the thumb-rest.

Finally, the flared end is known as the bell, which amplifies the sound. When playing to a microphone, it is often found that the sound produced from the bell is relatively coarse, and that a better tone can be recorded by placing the microphone a little way from the finger-holes of the instrument. This relates to the position of the instrument when playing to an audience: pointing down at the floor, except in the most vibrant parts of certain styles of music.

-- Jeff Wietor

Mason Waller Disguised as Marcus Schenkenberg in a Kilt

Mason Pandora Penelope Waller, a cajun by nature, in his slumbering Little Nemo mode, watches his sonambulist thoughts and notions drift as gentle leaves about him; watches his thoughts fall as autumn leaves from a thousand sleepy trees: leaves alive speaking call to him and calling him call him back to sleep or nudge him closer to the surface of his consciousness leafy thoughts of leafy dream trees dreams half-dreams wishes and urges to wake to himself: You'd like to think they forebear but they don't. They're Bravehearts, these unknowns, I tells ya these men in skirts, these noble Songs of Hiawatha these thoughts a-thinking nobodys; smooth sailing they sang of it over the moon (the wonder of it all) travelling in the aware something other than you -- freely passionately float within himself in tongues: each new thought considers a career in Hollywood or politics or as a magician's companion full of animal cunning, or with consummate skill, a touch of genius and with finesse utililzing Wucius Wong's Principles of Two-Dimensional Design in the pages of Flaunt magazine. One must always be prepared to learn something totally new. Mason mulls to himself dreamily: I am the axis around which moves a spiral the eternal revolution of human culture. Mason logically considers to himself: yellow is more akin to red than blue. The slow ticking of the second hand of the Krups clock. Stately ticking of the ticking clock the whispering ticking the stately tock ticking clock. Mason hears the moonlight whisper. Tea for breakfast silky oolong another day without money enough to beguile his many moods, Mason rouses himself from a low flying dream and opens one eye then another and shakes the sleep from his philosophical eyes to question the day after his warm soapy shower before his mirror lathered face shaving thoughts flicker and flit through him thoughts ooze from every cell of his body his unconscious body his clever unawareness his eyes see words his emotions feel nothing his eyes watch his eyes in the mirror while flashes of his father his father he knows but does not know occur to him: I can imagine a blind man piecing together a jig-saw puzzle by touch alone. A jig saw puzzle of a tree an acacia my father was in Korea in the war but never talks about it an almond my father was also in Italy during World War II, ski troupe yet never talks about it a beech when I was seven my father was naked shaving before a mirror a buckeye my father never talked about much of anything except to discipline me through words to my mother a candleberry my father dreamed of having a service station a gas station Texaco station after the war a date my father avoided talking directly to me palm my father lost his hair early dogwood when my father married my mother I was at the wedding how much wood would a woodpecker peck if a woodpecker would peck wood a ficus my father enjoyed and may still enjoy working out crossword puzzles a fig for a while in the early 60s my father smoked a pipe a fir my father was unfaithful once to my mother who never forgave him my favorite: ginkgo in autumn golden as god and a host of angels a grapefruit my father seemed lost at times lost in thought but never appeared to be thinking just sullen a hickory my father belonged to the Knights of Columbus a holly my father was really my step-father but I had his same last name a juniper my father touched me once but that was a slap to the head and kumquat my father had very old parents who frightened me like aliens from a planet called The Farm a laurel my father's father died old locust my father's mother died old and logwood my father's mother and father moved to a large house on a tree lined street in Fond du Lac Wisconsin a magnolia my father never cried openly a mango my father had back problems a maple my father smelled of Ben-Gay oak my father would "take-to-bed" and listen to the Braves play ball on the radio and olive, my father supported us a papaw my father brought home a cocker spaniel and named it "Ginger Peachy" pear my father was told to "get rid of the dog" and pecan my father once said to me while I was listening to Sgt. Preston of the Yukon on the radio: turn off that radio or I'll push it through the wall a quince my father collected pennies a rain tree my father owned a series of Jeeps a redwood my father lost his service station business when Big Corporate Oil got rid of "the little guys" sassafras my father failed at everything he tried spruce my father was unsure of "direction" sycamore my father may believe in something but I don't know what it is and teak my father lives with my mother in a trailer park in northern Wisconsin now a tulip tree my father goes out every day and collects cans and umbrella tree when I talk with my father on the phone he always says "you always sound so good, here's your mother" a varnish tree my father once said to me at the dinner table: "do you think you're god's gift to women?" the message was: I'm going to kill you and walnut my father saw me as a joke and would never talk about me to people he knew a weeping willow my father may have once been a very sexy man a white birch my father while still alive is a very distant memory a white cedar my father never told me anything about anything white gum my father once went to church regularly white oak my father may have once prayed white pine my father stopped saying "grace" at meals white poplar my father is a secret to me white spruce my father in 1965 wanted to buy a Mustang but settled for a vinyl-roofed LTD instead and willow my father spent a great deal of time trying to grow a good looking lawn a witch hazel my father seemed never to be around yew my father read the Milwaukee Sentinel intently and zebrawood my father? Only when all the pieces are put together, those small flat pieces of maybe and could be and I just want to be myself wishes do the shadows appear do the high-lights show do the concave or convex monochromatic surfaces of his memories begin to imagine how ruthlessly imagination has been not allowed to him. If I go out tonight what or who will I be. I can't believe how much Marcus Schenkenberg looks just like me. I have always wanted to be a waller I have always wished to be a mason. I am king of my castle. I am a Mason and a Waller. You can call me Mason Waller but that's not really who I am. I am made of stone. Carved from stone. No one will ever notice me no one will ever see me. I am a stone wall I am Mason Waller. I look good without a shirt sitting in the sun of a Sunday. I look god-like and goodly goodly as a Lothario in the full sun light of an August day sitting in the sun of a Sunday in my father's Mustang. I can't decide who I am sitting flat and intently and looking just like me is Marcus Schenkenberg looking good just like god-like me. I am carved from stone.

Across the street a boy with a pale white face: blood drips from his ears. A farm boy wears blue checks and hay. The fairy-tall high school girl dressed in her mother's prom dress the imperfect sentence of her nervous grandmother. The basic grid of hope. The terrifying well-dressed manners of the next generation. The drowned the suffocated the recent dead knocking knocking at the chamber door.

Mason believes in the day ahead in the comedy and magic of the day: Calm full of peace carrying out his assignment: he will go to work, board bravely the bus in his warrior kilt, work boots and torn leather jacket he will live where everyone shall see him he will not only feel but sense his strength: as a river hugs the shore he tells himself: I have time I have had time I will have time; I have a process I am a process I am a preparatory stage; I know it comes down to work in life; a place in life; I will call to the beasts the werewolves and upper management and say: I am me and I will have your heads.

Part Two -- Later that same Halloween day

"Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense."

A

Monday: Prince Charles and his wife Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, will visit hurricane-hit New Orleans on their first official overseas jaunt since marrying in April, the prince's office confirmed Monday Stompin at the Savoy books on Health Care Finance Science & Technology Measles (Signs and Symptoms) known for its typical skin rash CDW order FAX a word from the Chancellor Ginkgo Raymond Chandler twisted knickers check request which one to get; The Blue Room Benny Goodman; I could say Bella Bella each language tells me how grand you are Office Max under $200; Office Depot order laser paper 32 lb change TokyoBot robot clock back an hour; Nicaraguan officials began damage assessment and clean-up efforts Monday after Hurricane Beta swept the country before heading over the Pacific Ocean eat lettuce chopped turkey Paul Newman olive oil Samuel Alito, a federal appeals court judge from Philadelphia, was nominated to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor Monday morning yellow highlighter The Trees of San Francisco Mike Sullivan Raymond Chandler pulp stories clarinet Sing Sing Sing drum 1938 New Techniques in Gastrointestinal Imaging Medicinal Plants of the World Nutrients and Cell Signaling is a signal a sign Digital Human Anatomy and Endoscopic Ultrasonograph The Blood Cerebrospinal Fluid Barrier about 200,000 people in remote valleys and high mountains still haven't received aid or shelter three weeks after the 7.6 magnitude earthquake, the United Nations said on Oct. 28. As many as 2 million people in northern Pakistan need immediate help before the Himalayan winter sets in, the UN said An Atlas of Foot and Ankle Surgery Blackwell's Book Services; Halloween d.a. levy could make grandiose claims, and at the same time claim that neither he nor anyone else had anything to say worth hearing. You could see him as a nihilist, seeking oblivion, or a mystic seeking a void which produces endless miracles, which in turn fit quite plainly into the flow of daily life ten of swords Slaughterhouse-Five Ethan Hawke at an early age took acting classes at the McCarter Theatre and appeared in various high school performances struggling to finance his new movie BILLY DEAD, about a troubled working-class Michigan family fans are being offered the chance to buy up 900,000 shares of stock for just $8.75 each, so Hawke can raise the $8 million he needs to make the project, Julie Delpy, Vernon Dobtcheff, Louise Lemoine Torres, Rodolphe Pauly, Mariane Plasteig, Diabolo, Albert Delpy, Marie Pillet, Denis Evrard, Sam Shepherd would work as a stable hand, herdsman, orange picker, sheep shearer, bus boy, waiter and musician before beginning his career as a playwright in New York in 1964 True North Blue Moon Blue Guitar Blue Monday Rhapsody in Blue Moonglow Ebb Tide New Orleans Tennessee Williams Porgy & Bess The Little Prince The Ugly Duckling Hans Christian Andersen Bugs Bunny Jimmy Durante Will & Ariel Durant Klaus Barbie The Lone Ranger Long John Silver Billy the Kid Fritz the Cat Jim Sorcic James Sorcic James Martin James Jim Jim the House Jim Sorcic Milwaukee 1969 autumn sing his song sing James the songs of Jim Sorcic his poetry his careful walk his strut his miracle dance his politics of sexual cat and poetic mouse we will dance later and come whole heartedly heartfully hopefully heatedly eagerly softening him up by getting him hard inside him and looking for him with touch with hands with him in black leather jacket nothing else good morning let morning come to you while you cut out all the bits and pieces of people you didn't want to meet in your life cut in the rest people walk by feeling a compulsion to say something even though they're only passing through; behind the ordinary surface consciousness the mind is mixed up with divine conflict to live the consciousness of the Atman is to live in the calm unity and peace that is above things and separate from the world even when pervading it; Purusha; emanations portions hobgoblins sisters of mercy Agnesian nuns high school home room they have created the world of Asuras, Rakshasas, Pishachas; are you experiencing this? I can only translate the past into noun flashes into bitter bites of feelings which appear to be covered in a mass of flies, maggots and steaming with heat. a who's who of when and where; expected to be the mere servant of my own life the Butler of Memory the servant of nostalgia; the king of nouns the prince of time the keeper of signs the cataloguer of wish : a word involves being able to use it on certain occasions in a special tone of voice; you might say that certain words are only pegs to hang intonations on. read to me: Dear Folks: we are swell here -- so nice and warm. Suns every day. Was foggy earlier for the first time. Had a fine trip and no trouble only got into snow in Texas. Road's were slippery for 3 hours drive. How are you all. Write when you can. A sailor wearing a white sailor cap is talking to a girl in Bixby Park, Long Beach, California. I wonder who Mr. & Mrs. R. C. Rasmussen of 280 Bischoff Street Fond du Lac, Wisconsin are or more likely were. 2 cent stamp; John Adams; pinkish afternoon nobody's around at lunch went to lunch everybody quiet library hush I'm wondering about Story Telling and Character Development; do people develop except in stories? is that the same as just becoming more mellow or dead with age: worn out worn down too many cigarettes too much sex or jim beam or just eating too much; when do the young stop becoming young and just age away; is that a logical inference or just a generality. it's no wonder Mason thinks to himself: I want to go out as Marcus Schenkenberg. Understanding a sentence is more akin to understanding a piece of music than one might think. We can't cross the bridge to the execution until we are there. The police have ties to Kashmir's most-feared militants claimed responsibility Sunday for a series of terrorist bombings that killed 59 people in New Delhi.


.......

B

Mason as Marcus was heard to say:
Now winter nights enlarge
The number of their hours

.......

C

Mason writes home to his mother:
I don't think you will have much success in your proposed search for our ancestors, as I don’t believe we had any.

.......

D

Bang Bang Bang
Mason does his best Bette Davis "The Letter" impersonation
Bang Bang Bang

I never loved you I never loved you
I've always loved him I'll always love him.
O the moonlight the terrible moonlight.


-- Jeff Wietor

Fall Back

Dumbly morning arrives at 7.
The season of incremental darkness begins again.
I don't know.
Odor of semen in the Pacific warm breeze.
I don't want to say.
A man walks along McAllister reading the news.
I don't want to hear it.
Sycamore leaves stitched gray with fungus.
I'm dumb.
Cold sensation in the palm of the hand.
I am neither awake nor asleep.
Having not a feeling but a search for a feeling.
Earlier today than yesterday.
He either is or was feeling something.
I don't know.
He is feeling he was a memory.
That feeling exists or was existing.
He had been feeling something.
I don't want to say.
He repeats to remember his feeling.
In feeling he repeats his memory of remembering.
I don't want to hear it.
Everything that was is still.
Being that one.
Saying he was that one enough.
Try to listen.
Some are taking something.
Some are not taking everything
but would be taking anything.
There are many being living.
There is one being living.
He might have been one succeeding.
Go ahead memory, name names.
In living I don't know what
Ananda, my cat, thinks or does not think in sunlight.

The daily line of light grows shorter.
I want to say that it is not
a difference of degree.

When one is one being one
is being one suffering in being one.
Feels or does not feel in stillness.
I'm dumb.
Some laugh, some suffer.
Being one telling something.
Walking through he was asking and grieving.
I don't know.
He is not telling everything he was telling.
In not mentioning that he was one
he was being one meaning everything.
I don't want to say.
Morning arrived today at 7 yesterday at 8.
Tonight will arrive earlier today at 5
yesterday at 6

Susan phoned two days ago
to say there will be a sitting.
Will I sit alone or with others
Neither awake nor asleep.
How can one talk about understanding
and not understanding by asking
what it is you want.

Neither awake nor asleep
I don't want to hear it
I don't want to say
I don't know
I'm dumb

The Forgotten Dialect Of The Heart

How astonishing it is that language can almost mean,
and frightening that it does not quite. Love, we say,
God, we say, Rome and Michiko, we write, and the words
get it all wrong. We say bread and it means according
to which nation. French has no word for home,
and we have no word for strict pleasure. A people
in northern India is dying out because their ancient
tongue has no words for endearment. I dream of lost
vocabularies that might express some of what
we no longer can. Maybe the Etruscan texts would
finally explain why the couples on their tombs
are smiling. And maybe not. When the thousands
of mysterious Sumerian tablets were translated,
they seemed to be business records. But what if they
are poems or psalms? My joy is the same as twelve
Ethiopian goats standing silent in the morning light.
O Lord, thou art slabs of salt and ingots of copper,
as grand as ripe barley lithe under the wind's labor.
Her breasts are six white oxen loaded with bolts
of long-fibered Egyptian cotton. My love is a hundred
pitchers of honey. Shiploads of thuya are what
my body wants to say to your body. Giraffes are this
desire in the dark. Perhaps the spiral Minoan script
is not language but a map. What we feel most has
no name but amber, archers, cinnamon, horses, and birds.

-- Jack Gilbert

Deepening, the Feeling

Any expression of quality is the result of relationship between two opposite worlds, between two levels of reality. A direction is followed. And, as the years go on, it deepens or changes. It is in accordance with what one wishes to express that the technique also changes. Even from one painting to another, something may need to be enlivened again. The sensitivity is deepening, the feeling is becoming, so to say, more exact, and the technique needs to correspond, to be refined, attuned, in the same way a musical instrument needs to be attuned in accord with what is going to be played. What remains recognizable from one piece of work to another represents what is essential in the artist; it is his signature, his own voice.

There is another aspect I would like to touch upon. When I see that the painting is not going to go any further, there is a split. What I did does not belong to me any more; it is no longer my child. It becomes like a message sealed in a bottle thrown into the sea. Perhaps someday someone will find it and will read the message. But for me it already belongs to the past. A kind of death has taken place which frees me from identification with my own work.

-- Paul Reynard

5 Tanka

just for fun
I put Mother on my back

she weighs so
little that I start crying

and can't walk three steps

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

beastly face
with a mouth that opens
and closes

is all I see

of the man giving a talk

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

I work

and work yet my life
remains
impoverished as ever

I gaze at my hands

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

I close my eyes

yet nothing whatever
floats up in my mind

out of sheer loneliness
I reopen them

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

fearing
what lies in my heart
may be heard

I quickly draw back my chest

from the stethoscope

______________________________

-- Ishikawa Takuboku

from: A Book of Disquiet

We generally give to our ideas about the unknown the color of our notions about what we do know: If we call death a sleep it's because it has the appearance of sleep; if we call death a new life, it's because it seems different from life. We build our beliefs and hopes out of these small misunderstandings with reality and live off husks of bread we call cakes, the way poor children play at being happy.

But that's how all life is; at least that's how the particular way of life generally known as civilization is. Civilization consists in giving an inappropriate name to something and then dreaming what results from that. In fact the false name and the true dream do create a new reality. The object really does become other, because we have made it so. We manufacture realities. We use the raw materials we always used but the form lent it by art effectively prevents it from remaining the same. A table made out of pinewood is a pinetree but it is also a table. We sit down at the table not at the pinetree. . .

-- Fernando Pessoa

from: A Book of Disquiet

For a long time - I don't know if it's a matter of days or months - I haven't written down a single impression; I'm not thinking, therefore I'm not existing. I have forgotten who I am; I don't know how to write because I don't know how to be. Because of an oblique sleep, I was someone else. Knowing that I don't remember myself is waking up.

I fainted during a bit of my life. I regain consciousness without any memory of what I was, and the memory of who I was suffers for having been interrupted. There is in me a confused notion of an unknown interval, a futile effort on the part of my memory to want to find that other memory. I don't connect myself with myself. If I've lived, I forget having known it.

-- Fernando Pessoa

from: A Book of Disquiet

For a long time, I haven't existed. I am extremely calm. No one can distinguish me from who I am. I felt myself breathe just now as if I'd done something new, something late in coming to me. I begin to be conscious of being conscious. Perhaps tomorrow I will wake up to myself and again take up the course of my existence. I won't if by doing so I will be happier or sadder. I know nothing. I raise my head and I see that over toward the Castle hill, the sunset taking place in the opposite direction burning in dozen of windows with a high reverberation of cold fire. Around those eyes of hard flame the entire hill has an end-of-day smoothness. At least I can feel sad and be aware that in this sadness of mine - seen with hearing - is mixed the sudden sound of the trolley passing by, the incidental voices of some young people chatting, the forgotten whisper of the living city.
For a long time, I haven't been myself.

-- Fernando Pessoa

Homage To Life

It’s good to have chosen
A living home
And housed time
In a ceaseless heart
And seen my hands
Alight on the world,
As on an apple
In a little garden,
To have loved the earth,
The moon and the sun
Like old friends
Who have no equals,
And to have committed
The world to memory
Like a bright horseman
To his black steed,
To have given a face
To these words — woman, children,
And to have been a shore
For the wandering continents
And to have come upon the soul
With tiny strokes of the oars,
For it is scared away
By a brusque approach.
It is beautiful to have known
The shade under the leaves,
And to have felt age
Creep over the naked body,
And have accompanied pain
Of black blood in our veins,
And gilded its silence
With the star, Patience,
And to have all these words
Moving around in the head,
To choose the least beautiful of them
And let them have a ball,
To have felt life,
Hurried and ill loved,
And locked it up
In this poetry.

-- Jules Supervielle

Miu Miu Cells Mason About Adam Clearwater

Chapter 22

good morning it's Sunday morning are you watching a reduced Hurricane Wilma accelerate toward storm-weary Florida, threatening residents with 105-mph winds, tornadoes and a surge of seawater that could flood the Keys and the state's southwest coast? do you think life happened on earth by design some say that's how we got here it may be a lot of unverified nonsense watching Tab Hunter this morning on a morning show he was one of the biggest pop-movie stars years ago now he's a writer he wrote his autobiography because he heard somebody from a tabloid was finally going to expose him so he said: "I'd rather have you hear it from the horse's mouth than the horse's ass" a heart-throb knocking 'em dead in the 50s he's now in his seventies young love wasn't the half of it and hidden gay too now all the talk about baseball how 'bout those sox and the who are they playing does anyone watch baseball anymore it's like living in the 1950s take a revealing look at camouflage standing by in Naples Florida it might become a category three maybe not the streets of Cancun devastated and the looters want to eat they were shot as water came in people were sleeping on the floor in the water 17 hours in the dark soaking wet now a weaker storm debating whether to move but they're kinda waiting whether to leave they're closely watching Wilma they're expecting it to intensify significantly so many tropical storms they've used up all the names more than half of the Nigerians in the plane crash lived or died I'm not sure the week ahead will be chilly with nice autumn weather make time for dinner with KFC we can't stop asking where did we come from why are we here why did the world come to be peer into the inner cell they couldn't possibly evolve by chance the DNA cytoplasm mitochondrila-crista ribosome peroxisome vacuole sperm cells in semen sometimes the consciousness has no record of the initial impulse the deep memory of manifestation sweat forming on the hand video cradles what it sees more efficiently in other realms of existence smaller smaller tinier tinier minute minute we think there's a creator that's a christian creator or creature from the black lagoon greatest headlines of the century today of course and 79,000 people are now dead in the Pakistan quake and all the news reports two people dead in Cancun go figure I don't want to end up like my parents you're too young for this and too old for that and overwhelmed yelling tougher taking care of myself nowadays less than perfect I feel like hiding in something somewhere I don't know why my job as a friend makes me forget the weight of the world and take the matter into my own hands feeling the pain becoming zoned out numb not really interested in things and turning to Adam for advice feeling self-medicated just being around him no it's not a waste of time it's never a waste of time and he doesn't lead to self-destruction for that matter either; carrying about a lot of pain turned inside out hurting myself using food I'm close to him that's all he's like the excitement before the calm after a storm.

Adam's face a film-maker's dream of a dream of making films passes before my gaze like a young Tab Hunter an accident forced him to give up dancing but the things one can express with the hand, with the head, with the eyes, with the shoulders, with the physique of Vishnu Apollo sweet Jesus how many useless and encumbering words then disappear! What economy! a rigorous quest, a burnished soft face and immersion in paying attention to others' problem in spite of his resolve to become successful as an actor he just wants to go to work sometimes playing drums a master of precision to be a precision instrument himself precise movement of the interior to the exterior and looking honestly into your face saying it's all about you see for yourself you're the ultimatethrillingnumber1 fortunate with adulation a diamond blue voice and passionate for the appropriate his face peering down from an LA billboard Adam Cadmon so vast and huge each of his hairs a stream of light with an underlying metaphysical message a great guy normally quiet untouchable no bother I know I know drawing goofy hearts and love notes in his journal

you can talk to him you can talk with him you can talk about him you can talk talk taking talk taking words to new levels newer depths talking with him is never about him but about what he thinks about you thinking about southamerican poets italian design or george clooney on the early show singing in the rain laid back singing his praises with a gift for song music and years of expensive education an expert on Shakespeare playing jazz on a Yamaha piano dipping into hip-hop he doesn't tip toe he stomps twenty something a four star young man who makes a difference star of source ideas a perfect roommate he said what are you thinking about and when I told him he listened he makes you feel like a piece of music he plays happily ever after responsbile for his own health makes you want to sing your life your music

it's all now you see him now you don't disappears for days watches movies: Killer Shrews, Hercules Unchained, Swamp Diamonds, City Limits, Radar Secret Service stares out at the gray low fog city streets dreams of designing treehouses dressing in camouflage to hide in plain site to deceive by design to hide by standing out what does he want: to break you down you put you into a box by taking you out of a cage make you a common object tape your thoughts with his listening capacity his talent for hearing he's not the first to disguise the sun with light

a secret passage a shy boy: people with lapis lazuli eyes believe what they want to believe I never talked about it everything is quiet would you like to take Lola someplace tonight amazingly he can keep a secret possessing the presence of a spanish toreador sword poised before the bull lying in wait I'm off Adam now and not better for it you have to keep in mind the question: how do people learn the meaning of Adam especially in Technicolor iridescent gleaming and behaved: I can imagine Adam telling me that I've finally succeeded in really being able to think: to saturate words with hyacinth robin's egg & Siva lingam blue just before the film runs out.

I try never to forget those patterns we call poems; that every man is the measure of things; when the mind is in question everything is in question; trusted feelings compel me to act; that you are broad-minded and considerate like a spring breeze; the process of making poetry is the first Adam; you came from out of the blue and then returned when then it came to me: I am able to hear your voice saying it is the function of the brain to be secure; there's never been anything like it and it seems to me that without opposition there is no growth. Does it matter, why? It is very difficult to give one's attention to something. Is it not? I won't forget you. There is no how.

-- Jeff Wietor

Love 20 cents the First Quarter Mile

All right. I may have lied to you and about you, and made a
few pronouncements a bit too sweeping, perhaps, and
possibly forgotten to tag the bases here or there,
And damned your extravagance, and maligned your tastes,
and libeled your relatives, and slandered a few of your friends,
O.K.,
Nevertheless, come back.

Come home. I will agree to forget the statements that you
issued so copiously to the neighbors and the press,
And you will forget that figment of your imagination, the
blonde from Detroit;
I will agree that your lady friend who lives above us is not
crazy, bats, nutty as they come, but on the contrary
rather bright,
And you will concede that poor old Steinberg is neither a
drunk, nor a swindler, but simply a guy, on the eccentric
side, trying to get along.
(Are you listening, you bitch, and have you got this straight?)

Because I forgive you, yes, for everything.
I forgive you for being beautiful and generous and wise,
I forgive you, to put it simply, for being alive, and pardon
you, in short, for being you.

Because tonight you are in my hair and eyes,
And every street light that our taxi passes shows me you again,
still you,
And because tonight all other nights are black, all other hours
are cold and far away, and now, this minute, the stars
are very near and bright.

Come back. We will have a celebration to end all celebrations.
We will invite the undertaker who lives beneath us, and a
couple of boys from the office, and some other friends.
And Steinberg, who is off the wagon, and that
insane woman who lives upstairs, and a few reporters, if
anything should break.

-- Kenneth Fearing

Mason & Miu Miu Out Walking Together & Alone

Chapter 7

out walking in San Francisco's SOMA the secret language of the stars and planets Miu-Miu supposes to herself as she walks in cadence with Mason's amble, and the secret language of hope and misery mix into the fine brew and delicious froth I call life, how cold it’s become; this winter has been nothing but cold and rain. alchemy Mason mulls inside his brain trying himself to make synaptic connections searching in the dark world where words and sounds become veiled abstracts of possible realities sifting through words puzzling and unpuzzling pieces of probabilities conjectures and faint glimpses of what feel like truth but don't have the right ring yet have an undeniable resilience of perfectly pitched tone may at the same time reflect mere reasoning with himself to himself wonders what alchemy's really all about not the hocus-pocus that it’s made out to be: more light and air less smoke and mirrors of heavy metal gold production although who knows Mason thinks silently as he walks like a moan with Miu-Miu in the brittle nowhere he likes to think of as today. do you know Miu-Miu half sings intoning aloud do you know what painting I wish I had hanging in my apartment tell me Mason half begs what painting; that big orange and green Visitation, Pontormo’s Visitation with the double portraits hmmm answers Mason. dark unsatisfyingly sinister thoughts concerning Mason wander push shuffle saunter & strut through Miu-Miu’s attentively distracted mind-screen as they cross Eleventh Street at Folsom: Mason kills everything by over-indulging his thinking about everything too smoothely, he always makes me feel like I'm not only only half-right but usually not even a quarter right about what I'm talking about or wondering and pondering he makes me feel like everybody has to die without ever arriving at a realization or insight into anything he can make a plus feel like a minus I can't believe I'll die it's impossible to think about death this isn't how I want to know Mason he’s a symbol of everything beautiful and corrupt or morbid and mysterious and benignly forgivable; a burden a guitar string my ruby slipper, a knight of swords, you’re not anything substantial when you're with him he’s a leathery Lothario in the making he’s the One he’s willowy an ancient rite a heavenly sphere a strength a magical mouthed simplicity. I have no energy it’s a nightmare no it’s not it’s insane whacked-out in a funhouse way a thousand little Masons all decked out in a body that would fit snuggly into a Golden Rectangle perfectly designed to be seen for brief moments my cat-walk model I know I’m dreaming I wink at reality without knowing what I mean by reality I pretend this is a slow motioned walk along a vacant street within a street full of people and I can’t help myself out of this nightmare -- no that can’t be -- all I have is a grave ahead of me? the cold this thin air I’m breathing I’m breathing and walking I’ll look at something that will help I should talk to him say something to show I’m here with him: Mason do you ever have crazy thoughts What? crazy crazy no what do you mean you know like you sense you’re walking along the street but also feel like you’re home & just died in bed that’s crazy you give too much power to thoughts and don’t think enough about having no thoughts that’s what I love about him he always says the right thing I wonder if he means it maybe he is crazy and the cold is making me doubt my own certainties certainly certainties what is certain is something I don’t know about. it’s hopeless I laugh I’ll never get that painting it must be huge it is worth a kazillion dollars and it means something to half a million people who protect it with their fears and dreams and hopes and love it patiently perfectly a metaphor for memory the sublime trickster of traveling effortlessly through time and space effortlessly he has a pair of dice that must have went to Harvard. the god and planet Mercury. the dense body of the Earth. to make out of our lives something akin to a spirit & aware. the appearance of things. the visitation. this visitor. where did he go I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know I feel like a visitor here just visiting god I love painting I love sewing I love fabric and texture and color so I love the idea of Mason so I love it when he visits me and I love it when he models and I pay him for it I know he enjoys me teasing him with extravagant attention straight out of pulp-fiction romance. Miu-Miu looks up at the sky hoping to channel far off energy. Mason senses her beside him and says in a faint and distant voice don’t worry we’re almost there. what’s the goal Miu-Miu what’s the goal on the material level that’s all we have a goal on a material level; signs he says signs turn right turn left wet paint stop Sagittarius Virgo men women: out of the blue hears music inside his head as if he were wearing earphones but isn't: It was a lucky April shower; opera it was the most convenient bebop door, I found swing a million dollar baby in a five and ten cent store. The rain electronica continued a cappela for an hour, hung around whistling to himself for three or four, around a million dollar baby in a five Gospel and Industrial ten cent Motown store. She was hard rock selling china and when she reggae made Trance those eyes, I kept Zydeco buying china until the crowd pizzicato got wise. Incident'ly Easy Listening if you should run into a shower, just step rhythm and blues inside my cottage door, And meet the million dollar gangsta baby from the five and ten cent store. Mason keeps a vast array of metals and other alchemical material in his pockets: a penny, seven dimes, a nickel, a ring of keys, a rabbit’s foot, a miniature Porsche, an Acme Thunderer Made in England whistle, a Zippo lighter embossed with a cactus and a coyote howling at the moon, a Rostfrei thin flat serviceable jack-knife, a spherical ball of Carrera marble with all the traits of a miniature Moon, a leather wallet with paper money, pieces of paper with names inscribed, scribbled; a tiny flat package tied with string he was told never to open and a small medallion of the dali lama which would be the elixir of immortality and why will “I” not be here why will I not be here why will I not be here it is only just . Mason realizes his life changed the moment Jupiter was impacted by a stray meteor catastrophe in the late 90s. Catastrophe. there’s the DNA Lounge we’re almost there: the cosmic blue sky somewhere behind the cosmic gray clouds hanging in the ether in the emptiness created purposefully to contain all the magic bric-a-brac of life of living of death of dying of wishing craving desiring birth again.

-- Jeff Wietor

I Am Standing

I am standing on the threshold about to enter a room. It is a complicated business. In the first place I must shove against an atmosphere pressing with a force of fourteen pounds on every square inch of my body. I must make sure of landing on a plank travelling at twenty miles a second round the sun - a fraction of a second too early or too late, the plank would be miles away. I must do this whilst hanging from a round planet head outward into space, and with a wind of aether blowing at no one knows how many miles a second through every interstice of my body. The plank has no solidity of substance. To step on it is like stepping on a swarm of flies. Shall I not slip through? No, if I make the venture one of the flies hits me and gives a boost up again; I fall again and am knocked upwards by another fly; and so on. I may hope that the net result will be that I remain about steady; but if unfortunately I should slip through the floor or be boosted too violently up to the ceiling, the occurrence would be, not a violation of the laws of Nature, but a rare coincidence...

Verily, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a scientific man to pass through a door. And whether the door be barn door or church door it might be wiser that he should consent to be an ordinary man and walk in rather than wait till all the difficulties involved in a really scientific ingress are resolved.

--A.S. Eddington

Never Work Hard

Let us reject tedious work. It goes against human nature, against the cosmic rhythms, it goes against man himself, to take trouble where none is needed. It is natural for him to apply himself to avoiding such work; to use every instrument that comes to hand, every favorable chance which can help him out, to make his work easier and more pleasant. Tedious work is inhuman and repugnant, every work which shows signs of it is ugly. It is pleasure and ease, without harshness and constraint, which create grace in every human gesture.

-- Jean Dubuffet

California Plush

The only thing I miss about Los Angeles

is the Hollywood Freeway at midnight, windows down and
radio blaring
bearing right into the center of the city, the Capitol Tower
on the right, and beyond it, Hollywood Boulevard
blazing

--pimps, surplus stores, footprints of the stars

--descending through the city
fast as the law would allow

through the lights, then rising to the stack
out of the city
to the stack where lanes are stacked six deep

and you on top; the air
now clean, for a moment weightless

without memories, or
need for a past.



The need for the past

is so much at the center of my life
I write this poem to record my discovery of it,
my reconciliation.

It was in Bishop, the room was done
in California plush: we had gone into the coffee shop, were told
you could only get a steak in the bar:
I hesitated,
not wanting to be an occasion of temptation for my father

but he wanted to, so we entered

a dark room, with amber water glasses, walnut
tables, captain's chairs,
plastic doilies, papier-mâché bas-relief wall ballerinas,
German memorial plates "bought on a trip to Europe,"
Puritan crosshatch green-yellow wallpaper,
frilly shades, cowhide
booths--

I thought of Cambridge:

the lovely congruent elegance
of Revolutionary architecture, even of

ersatz thirties Georgian

seemed alien, a threat, sign
of all I was not--

to bode order and lucidity

as an ideal, if not reality--

not this California plush, which

also

I was not.

And so I made myself an Easterner,
finding it, after all, more like me
than I had let myself hope.

And now, staring into the embittered face of
my father,

again, for two weeks, as twice a year,
I was back.

The waitress asked us if we wanted a drink.
Grimly, I waited until he said no...



Before the tribunal of the world I submit the following
document:

Nancy showed it to us,
in her apartment at the model,
as she waited month by month
for the property settlement, her children grown
and working for their father,
at fifty-three now alone,
a drink in her hand:

as my father said,
"They keep a drink in her hand":

Name Wallace du Bois
Box No 128 Chino, Calif.
Date July 25 ,19 54

Mr Howard Arturian
I am writing a letter to you this afternoon while I'm in the
mood of writing. How is everything getting along with you these
fine days, as for me everything is just fine and I feel great except for
the heat I think its lot warmer then it is up there but I don't mind
it so much. I work at the dairy half day and I go to trade school the
other half day Body & Fender, now I am learning how to spray
paint cars I've already painted one and now I got another car to
paint. So now I think I've learned all I want after I have learned all
this. I know how to straighten metals and all that. I forgot to say
"Hello" to you. The reason why I am writing to you is about a job,
my Parole Officer told me that he got letter from and that you want
me to go to work for you. So I wanted to know if its truth. When
I go to the Board in Feb. I'll tell them what I want to do and where
I would like to go, so if you want me to work for you I'd rather have
you sent me to your brother John in Tonapah and place to stay for
my family. The Old Lady says the same thing in her last letter that
she would be some place else then in Bishop, thats the way I feel
too.and another thing is my drinking problem. I made up my mind
to quit my drinking, after all what it did to me and what happen.
This is one thing I'll never forget as longs as I live I never want
to go through all this mess again. This sure did teach me lot of things
that I never knew before. So Howard you can let me know soon
as possible. I sure would appreciate it.

P.S From Your Friend
I hope you can read my Wally Du Bois
writing. I am a little nervous yet

--He and his wife had given a party, and
one of the guests was walking away
just as Wallace started backing up his car.
He hit him, so put the body in the back seat
and drove to a deserted road.
There he put it before the tires, and
ran back and forth over it several times.

When he got out of Chino, he did,
indeed, never do that again:
but one child was dead, his only son,
found with the rest of the family
immobile in their beds with typhoid,
next to the mother, the child having been
dead two days:

he continued to drink, and as if it were the Old West
shot up the town a couple of Saturday nights.

"So now I think I've learned all I want
after I have learned all this: this sure did teach me a lot of things
that I never knew before.
I am a little nervous yet."

It seems to me
an emblem of Bishop--



For watching the room, as the waitresses in their
back-combed, Parisian, peroxided, bouffant hairdos,
and plastic belts,
moved back and forth

I thought of Wallace, and
the room suddenly seemed to me
not uninteresting at all:

they were the same. Every plate and chair

had its congruence with

all the choices creating

these people, created

by them--by me,

for this is my father's chosen country, my origin.

Before, I had merely been anxious, bored; now,
I began to ask a thousand questions...




He was, of course, mistrustful, knowing I was bored,
knowing he had dragged me up here from Bakersfield

after five years

of almost managing to forget Bishop existed.

But he soon became loquacious, ordered a drink,
and settled down for
an afternoon of talk...

He liked Bishop: somehow, it was to his taste, this
hard-drinking, loud, visited-by-movie-stars town.
"Better to be a big fish in a little pond."

And he was: when they came to shoot a film,
he entertained them; Miss A--, who wore
nothing at all under her mink coat; Mr. M--,
good horseman, good shot.

"But when your mother
let me down" (for alcoholism and
infidelity, she divorced him)
"and Los Angeles wouldn't give us water any more,
I had to leave.

We were the first people to grow potatoes in this valley."

When he began to tell me
that he lost control of the business
because of the settlement he gave my mother,

because I had heard it
many times,

in revenge, I asked why people up here drank so much.

He hesitated. "Bored, I guess.
--Not much to do."

And why had Nancy's husband left her?

In bitterness, all he said was:
"People up here drink too damn much."

And that was how experience
had informed his life.

"So now I think I've learned all I want
after I have learned all this: this sure did teach me a lot of things
that I never knew before.
I am a little nervous yet."



Yet, as my mother said,
returning, as always, to the past,

"I wouldn't change any of it.
It taught me so much. Gladys
is such an innocent creature: you look into her face
and somehow it's empty, all she worries about
are sales and the baby.
her husband's too good!"

It's quite pointless to call this rationalization:
my mother, for uncertain reasons, has had her
bout with insanity, but she's right:

the past in maiming us,
makes us,
fruition
is also
destruction:

I think of Proust, dying
in a cork-linked room, because he refuses to eat
because he thinks that he cannot write if he eats
because he wills to write, to finish his novel

--his novel which recaptures the past, and
with a kind of joy, because
in the debris
of the past, he has found the sources of the necessities

which have led him to this room, writing

--in this strange harmony, does he will
for it to have been different?

And I can't not think of the remorse of Oedipus,

who tries to escape, to expiate the past
by blinding himself, and
then, when he is dying, sees that he has become a Daimon

--does he, discovering, at last, this cruel
coherence created by
"the order of the universe"

--does he will
anything reversed?



I look at my father:
as he drinks his way into garrulous, shaky
defensiveness, the debris of the past
is just debris--; whatever I reason, it is a desolation
to watch...

must I watch?
He will not change; he does not want to change;

every defeated gesture implies
the past is useless, irretrievable...
--I want to change: I want to stop fear's subtle

guidance of my life--; but, how can I do that
if I am still
afraid of its source?

-- Frank Bidart

Northwest Passage

Out past Sylvan Beach is the place
They still call Indian Village
Built only to be burned
The summer Spencer Tracy came to town
For years after that
Whole families would picnic there
Scavenging the debris
For rubber arrowheads
But when Spencer came
Everyone got jobs
Five dollars a day and lunch
The Depression ending with glamour
And the chance to sew on a button
For a star
Some of the men were extras
Growing beards and wearing buckskin
Rogers’ Rangers looking for that passage
All summer long
From eight to five
My father was among them
And once years later
The summer after he died
I saw the movie on the late show
I stared at it hard
Even recognized a few landmarks
I scavenged every frame
For the smallest sign of him
I found none

-- Vern Rutsala