_________________________________________________
SAID
(story
telling story for Catherine Bates)
‘But as it was, / A dead shepherd brought
tremendous chords from hell // And bade the sheep
carouse. Or so they said.’
WALLACE
STEVENS, ‘Notes toward a Supreme Fiction’
Flat dull sun. Stone talks to
stone. Enabler of a tradition repents. Actors see actors. (Who matters? Any-
one.) A level quantity of consciousness.
Liberating. (Hard to believe: kid pissing in public.
On busy
by accretion. Was it the model of life or story that
first led to the formulation of narrative (and
they all lived happily
ever after)? A period of time in which everything is OK.
One thousand and
one. One vivid dream too many: chatting with Lars von Trier, who is re-directing
appears to be the set of Gangs
of New York. First meeting/memory: many-coloured
trousers. Newly
tidied room suggests a neatened mind. Blunted and sharpened.
‘Somewhere along the way we have
begun to read the poem.’
(It was a dark and stormy night and the rain came down in torrents and the
little boy sat on his father’s knee and said, “Father, tell
me a tale.” And it went like this:) Choppy
reggae guitar, horn
stabs, first thing on a Monday morning, on the bus: joy. Ambivalence is seen to
be
constructive. Altitude. The heart of the infection. Ultra-ironic.
‘Why don’t we put the show on
right here?’ Talking as ‘myth-ing’, as
narrative/memory, personal and social. A heavy whoosh as
rain begins to fall outside. ‘The most
acutely contemporary.’ A cutter. Study
electricity, etc. Pliable
flesh. ‘A sucker for meaning, me.’ Who’s counting? His ideas were better
than his artefacts. ‘If David
Antin is a poet, I don’t want to
be a poet.’ Imaginary yo-yo: up, down. Darling, I’ve been / breaking
glass / in your room
again. / Listen. Most meaningless. Nutty
or natty? Soap-watching is now the new
thing. (The neo-conservative regime is explicit, does not
represent a shadowy conspiracy: they do
want they do in open
view.) Tell me a story. The events, buried under layers of
newsprint. Nothing
but your own internal noise. (Shouldn’t that
‘t’ be ‘f’?) Her art. (And it went like this:) ‘Does Cindy
to sleep. Earn some respite. The witty
one. Made/Born to work. The quizzical old woman
appeared
the very model of
dignity. The ‘lie’ as a constructive principle. Diet
Coke habit (or not). (Artaud: ‘burn
the museums’.) Clarity of mind returns on a rainy day. Pigeon hopping down steps. Playful in a
deadening way. ‘Say ‘hi’ to
the kids!’ Younger (and older) models. Crazed guy, computer disk. In-
validated. ‘It’ll eat your rhetoric for breakfast/alive.’
Vent things. Surely that can’t be the same girl
waiting, a good seven
hours later? ‘It’s sticky out there, Dad!’ Structure,
imitating a root. Thesis as
psychic wound. (Do others’ dreams seem so remarkably
straightforward, so easy to ‘source’? Do
yours appear that way to
others?) Pain deserves to live: a quick read of something fun. Each (and
every) scene might be read as a metaphor for the
‘fundamental experience’. Shape of the state of
things. (And it went
like this:) Shamefaced.
Flip. Eye-candy for the blind (a phrase you still don’t fully
understand). Life as
book-mark/breath-space. Workers of the world untie! Swear-shape.
‘I am a fish,
albeit a rather smart
one.’ ‘If Socrates is a poet ill consider it.’ Even Mecha-Godzilla
started out with
sensitive skin. (Seen too much? Yes and no.) Skipped stylus. Kick/kiss ass. Barney the dinosaur’s
disturbing uni-teeth. Sudden loss of location, figured as the questions:
Where is the nearest Seven-
Eleven? Can I get a drink? What next? The
promised rain, provisional. More true/Truer. 57
channels
and one thing on.
Three strong beats. Met/a/four. Who was a killer. A good person. Spoken to
(shoot
the messenger). Distances collapse. Picture
glory. Grace. Break to listen to Mogwai.
Tempted to
destruction. A cutting of credit cards. Hill: ‘the moral and emotional
attrition which is the toll exacted
by ambiguity, obscurity, and all forms of disputation’.
Also: ‘[a]s with other patrimonies, our
language is both a blessing
and a curse, but in the right hands it can mediate within itself, thereby
transforming blessing into curse, curse into blessing.’ Patrimonies? A ‘father-tongue’?
Whose right
hands? Poor doubt. Blown off. Formidable racket gathering: government, media,
military (the bugle
sounds). We hear afar. ‘A plume of smoke, visible at a
distance / In which people burn.’ (Inferno-
like. Awaiting us.) Sell the kids for food. Contra
glazed with rainwater beside the white chickens. Curses!
Line-break! Run through backwards. Once
upon a time. Ouch. Twitching
language of appraisal: who lies loudest; check my pulse; plug wonder
head-first into the grid; sue my ass. Peace
and quiet (in that order). Antisociable. (Things do seem
to be happening down
there.) The deft ones. And there he is: ‘a very
amiable monster, a very splendid
pageant’. . . . Free speech and plain discourse: cats and
dogs can understand, or not (ornament). Play
about not surviving. Steps or stops? Pedant or puritan? Beating off his mother in the first canto. Night
to the vertical and horizontal depths. (And it went like this:) Innocent will. Clue-haiku.
Plant
cannibalism. Segue. Calling down the moon. Syncopate his senses. The world
exists: it does/does not
need us to speak for it. Bored with the
first thought. Face repeats. ‘I did not not
do work!’ A strand
in the air. A note on
Pound’s stationary: ‘none of Pound’s postwar letters to Zukofsky
feature printed
letterheads.’ The candles re-ignite themselves. ‘He who steals my purse, blah blah.’
Bling bling. See
the year-zero end-zone
type scenario. The seemingly arbitrary that is not arbitrary. Short-hand
that is
not short-hand. ‘Miss’
lady. Sunlight improves
mood (doctor’s orders). No more borders. The latent raindrops on the
leaves
of the lady’s mantle do truly look like vari-sized
diamonds. Just-noticed chap bowling on top of yr
neighbour’s weathervane. Her thin hand. Never been a problem before – suddenly is.
It’s a mixed-up,
muddled-up, shook-up world – ’cept
for Lola. Mental monkey bar. Poet’s job is to
assert values: you
rate oranges. Has been said. Arrange it so. Everything looks more
real/solid/present in sunshine. The
actual bird. Cabbage white. Buddleia. Never hide the sideshow, Oz-style. Kids doing surveys. On
a matter peer. (And
it went like this:) If all stopped, tradition would
die in one generation. The OED
as backdrop. Kingdom for an eraser.
Perpetually-delayed opening shot: to play. Impermeable.
Im-
pervious. Pervert. Alter. Age. (That splintering sound you hear is an even chance.) (And
it went like
this:) Try to build up a head of eloquence, breezing through
obstacles, taking in – Messiaen-like – no-
tations of the birds. You
make insane demands. Caught flash of livid sun.
Lacking sexual wit (a good
thing?). Bruising both. Recondite graffiti. ‘Conclusion: give some idea of what you
think the con-
clusion might be.’ Many
hands make off with it. Men and machines made out of words. Uselessness
of words. (And it went like this:)
Poor doubt. An audible trace. Lulls
an indie baby to sleep. ‘The days
say poem.’ Where from
there? Several postal excitements. Two blank pages,
facing each other. It’s just
a little bit back from the main road. Yes: follow
eclogue with elegy/epic. Pressures occurring else-
where: tear. Minor pad. Distant car on gravel, heard through sleep, makes
metaphor, registers: waves
on shingle. I get bored. Overlap/Underworld.
In an ideal world this would be the only poem. No
narrative begins. Silence is
non-negotiable. Arch little joke. Result from work.
So much language
is dead. Rustic sir cut! Three short quacking sounds: what’s
that? Lone question mark?
your thought. Playful listening. ‘Bring lust into the library (or it is
hell).’ You, eternal you, forget
the opening. Closedmindedness is
sin. Realistic trajectory (from here). ‘The logic is
strong.’ Almost
cut my hair. Aphorism
frenzy. Matching the masters lb. 4 lb. Weight
lifted off hard, cold shoulders. Off
the beaten track record. The hero/heroine paces up and down.
‘From going to and fro in the earth, and
from walking up and
down in it.’ A hedge around. An echo
of. The hero/heroine comes to a well, and
drinks thereof. Nominal, this fog.
Play alternates between the beautiful and the grotesque. Offends
reality. Owls sound like
shimmy against glass, harsh. ‘Also, as a practicing poet, I am interested in
prosody for more personal reasons too.’ These are true
contradictions. These are real: something that
you felt. ‘Time Capsule of Dust and String.’ Penultimate.
Alphabet-as-poem: a round of geetars feeding
back. Look of things looked at: roem,
pose. Something seen. In the fields.
In the wheat. Sheep in the
pen. A virtual consensus. Spectral landlord.
Pleoramic: magic-lantern stuff. All
of beginning Alan. Lauder. More-ish noir. Echo: report of a
thing that hasn’t happened. Not in
one. Give back the
bacon to its only lord, the pig. Ounce upon a timer. A
single granite text: mon-
otony. Write
/ the wants / of a book / on fire. Next to nothing
(to next). Freeze-frame unfrozen. I
trust
in this. Herald of Free Enterprise. ‘[P]oor Jack of every trade’. Storytell. Miraculous
transcendence (kid
you not). Past the door, not coming in, not going out. Body-time (eye-time) vs. clock-time. Be to be
seen. Hoping to speed through toil. ‘That is not, I believe, the
issue.’ Would you like to buy an O, short
and sweet? Williams’ craft. Duchamp’s crafty. A good person/fish.
Dentist-nightmare-hell. (Seen too
much? Said too
little/much?) That you actually said ‘You’re not like anyone I have ever met’,
feeling
it as cliché, but (more importantly) as the simple truth of
the situation at that moment – feel it click
onto separate, parallel
tracks somewhere in your head. Paste. Cutting of credit cards. Sexual positioning
of words. Rattling along in fine fettle.
(And it went like this:) Thick black line, of shiny ink: the end.
LOWENMENSCH
It
is in
this: magic
implicit
in
the
act of
forming shape:
the lion
men
sniff
air, trace
blood – a stiff
and final
art.
*
Stock
figures
hunt the wild –
the blooded
kill –
no
further
use, no thought
intact, in
them
(see
lack of
memory
as blessing,
boy).