air hot & full of rancor / can’t breathe / the bestial reliquary open on my chest / body full of foul humor / a plague doctor nowhere in sight / fallow fields & mud / so much boot-sucking mud / skull encased in mud / the pressure of 10 andré bretons & 3 1/2 tristan tzaras / every other breath an exquisite corpse / pustules full / venom sacs stretched to leaking / my own worst enemy / uninhibited by the showiness of ages
“How do you know what you’ve forgotten? He knew only that he was a case of nerves between two eternities.”
I have no idea what she says, or what tongue she speaks. She doesn’t speak English or Spanish, and that’s all I can muster. I haven’t the slightest idea of what she is up to, out in this perpetual gloom. But she keeps saying: “I dag ar det tisdag, I dag ar det tisdag, I dag ar det tisdag…”
I must have an odd look on my face because her lower lip quivers and her eyes well up. I don’t know what I can do for her. I offer shelter. She doesn’t understand, just repeats the same thing. I don’t know how to help. I want to help. What is she, ten or eleven years-old? How can she be out here alone?
So I say “yes!” and give her a big old bear hug.
What else is there to do in this hard-dead world? We once contented ourselves with keeping our families safe and near. Those that were content, maybe had a close circle of friends (some circles were larger than others, some were merely small frayed arcs) — maybe we tithed and volunteered to read or feed others more needy — for some this seemed enough.
But we don’t concern ourselves with the wider world anymore. Is there a world anymore? We’re safe here. It’s all waste out there.
She doesn’t battle this bear hug and she stops speaking. I squeeze to give comfort. She evanesces. Atom by atom all that is left is air.
I’m left at the shelter doorway looking like I’m hugging myself — that is, if anyone were there to look. Who would, who could, in this darkness? I’m alone, wondering why I don’t do this more often. Hug myself.
I go back into the shelter and down the stairs to the writing room. I’m down to a ream of paper, a handful of pens, and two candles… but I must compose some lines…
I.
Did I hear it in a dream? Or is it a long-distant memory? I dag är det tisdag…
A drooping of the eyelids in a sleepless Moment As you fight the sweep Of darkness Upon you. Only the whispered Supplication From the darkest corner Of childhood Releases you from penury. Peaceful Sleep never comes.
II.
I condone what you done…
In the wimple sun I slapped away the wattle arm Of the man that bred Me to a hardened son.
I agree with your version Of sublime reparation.
I condone what you done…
III.
Condone / Condemn
I dag är det tisdag…
“But in a dream I don’t worry about touching you, ruining you in that way. In a dream, I dance by myself, and I collapse.”
— Carolyn Zaikowski / In a Dream, I Dance by Myslef, and I Collapse
…our own worst enemy in this dank sepulcher—made our beds—breathe our own discharges—drunk on permafrost tundra-seeping methane—make it hot—turn the drab orange heat dome up—breath impossible—so my name is hip-priest/king bombogenesis of the waning anthropocene—a wilt-dripping planet hotter than the pleistocene—scads of new fossil fuel made of the old consumers of the same—like the man sang many years ago—for here am I sitting sitting in a tin can far above the world planet earth is…
what is that grey-green distended ochre mass?
who wrote this?
who ran this ship aground?
“Yes. Or you forwards and I backwards. The perfect pair. Like Dante’s damned, with their faces arsy-versy. Our tears will water our bottoms.”
Boy racers set In Sevastopol— Grandiloquence & eminence— On the blur frostway line. Two, three,six,ten & o n e (last) One. Boom. Boom. Vroom. Zoom With a tambor & villainy. Clearing out the country Side. Who you with, sonny? Who You with? I’m with thee man With the shashka Out to strafe this land Down To the bedrock. Aegean. Black. Caspian. How’s that for an abecedarian? How’s that for reach? Remember the Atlantic To Pacific boy racers? Get behind the tank & follow me down. We gonna’ slap their hands Clean of what they hold & make it ours. Take. Take. Take. ‘Cause We can. Bully boy racer, Bully boy, boohoo! Manifest Destiny. We’ve Seen this B-4. The bully boy Ploy. Always Unjust. Always A Deadly Bore.
“I want someone who will stand on my shoulders and punch God in the face.”
The indolence of stay-at-home drinking. The lack of squeeze in this bottle. Pleased to meet me—pleased to cleft myself. I clean myself in the mirror…
It was sometime around 1985 and there were misdemeanors in my motherland’s poetry—misdeeds and pepper pot wonders around the circuit of couplets in search of a perfect end-rhyme.
My motherland was still in a training bra—in the process of becoming an anti-nowhere lecher farmer. Her beehive landings would turn themselves on and off at the most inopportune moments.
The hot chocolate boy was still a lone cocoa bean far from transcendence.
PW Botha was the “Villain of the Hour,” so a bunch of rock and pop stars insisted they weren’t going to play Sun City. Approbation. A video. A song. The right idea. Those were the yearbooks of politically righteous causeway views.
I was a mere eggcup in my motherland’s tabernacle—while my father was “bailiff enough” of the “most lost” of lost causes—together, they were the housemasters of a bureaucrat stomp so out of time and detuned that the state tacticians tendered resignations at the nearest cornershops.
But we are still here—in the kaleidoscope of plague times—still plugging away. And here we are now—still—unsupervised and undeserving of better.
“Soon I began to say black people and white people, like everyone else, uttering the lie with increasing ease, conceding the sameness of our difference, deferring to a dreading vision of a racialised world. For agreeing to be black and white, we also agree to limit the complexity of possibility, we agree to mendacities that for centuries served and will continue to serve crude hungers for power and pathological self-affirmations.”
When you hit the wall, son: Avoid obfuscation. Eschew the picayune. Think big, boy.
Pray every day. Do right. Go to church. Go to work.
Bypass tontines. Eat every toston that passes before you. Stay fit and sober.
Do as I say.
“Don’t interfere in boy/girl fights.” If you beat someone do it in the bathroom. Blood cleans up easier from tile.
Stay away when I set your mother straight. Don’t tally score when we beat you.
Your mother and I never lie. Assume your mother and I lie.
Avoid working the sugar cane harvests. Use sassafras leaves to keep flying insects at bay.
Ours are the best leaders. Revel in cotton candy politics. Believe in the sanctity of Richard M. Nixon. We get the leaders we deserve.
Believe that you are special. Know that you are a worthless disappointment. Believe that you are superior to others. Know that you are inferior to us.
Might and money make right. Invest wisely.
Save time and money.
Say no to drugs. (Ha!)
Always keep your gun loaded. Never point your gun at your own head.
Be a team player. Be a lone wolf.
Respect women. You see I never pass up a chance to leer at one.
Be faithful. As long as they don’t find out.
Don’t talk back.
Tip your whores generously. Smoke opium with any and every governor you cross.
Believe in American hegemony. Our drugs are the only justified drugs. Our wars are the only justified wars.
Meritocracy forever. Capitalism or death.
Always drive American. Take care of your planet.
Don’t tally the score late in the game. Don’t hate your parents. Don’t beat or mistreat us when we are frail.
Remember everything we taught you, Death will be upon you soon enough.
“A range of almost two octaves means the devil has risen in you. My mother pressed against a washing machine by a man not my father. How can we learn by dissonance?”
