Eight Poems from What Just Happened: lockdown poems
[“I write better poems than anyone”]
I write better poems than anyone
and the way you can tell is
by attending the tiny hairs
until infinite love.
People say “love.” Its most general
definition would be ego dissolved
by reality, which is also possibly
why it gets paired with
death. Flies have hair
and are named for their most conspicuous
property. “I heard a Fly buzz
— when I died — ”
Buzz means fly. Love, Richard
[“I like the souls of the poets I love”]
I like the souls of the poets I love
more than I like their poems.
It’s as if the poems roughly
correspond to their author’s
being, and I’m temporarily
rescued by how my own
(being) is arranged to more
closely resemble theirs as I read.
Kurt Schwitters, Merzbild 1B Bild mit rotem Kreuz, 1919. Oil and collage on board. HOK.
[“as I strolled out inside”]
as I strolled out inside
protective reality
sunlight performed
the metaphysics of the original
conceptual artist and then
was perforated by birds
a lollipop in a hot mouth the graphic
and revelation-triggers like art
forms of noise and flare from
right through the amber azure
and horrible pistol
barrel children
slaps or
sometimes entrees to
death by police lice lettuce class
an injured sound
the flare of a leaf enlarging grief
preoccupations (chess, sex, art, amusement)
fundamentally knuckle
but to Mallarmé was
sand struck mental stacks that reached to
beauty or its means an element
of their visual appeal
or actually beyond
Kurt Schwitters, Collage with Playing Card, 1940. Oil, paper, and cardboard on card. BJG.
Psychal Anecdotes or
Cycle Annie (“I heard her call my name”)
How much does the world
have in common with the rest
of the universe? Is it its expression
or its affliction? I guess what I want
to know is whether a paradise where
dualities cease to be
is possible or does
consciousness eliminate the possibility?
Classically, poems are dictated from
without through the poet, and that occurs
but they can be arrived at
by deliberation too.
The poem says something simple or
perhaps logically opaque
in such an engaging way that one
hardly notices or cares what might
be otherwise meant.
From the engineer’s seat
of a speeding train is observed
to the right a pink piglet or naked
infant child scrambling
out the window into the landscape.
I want to be named Pierre Klossowski or Raphael Rubenstein
and then my mind split open
Kurt Schwitters, Radiating World (Merzbild 31B), 1920. Oil and collage on board. Phillips Collection.
Sluggish
When I see in dreams people
I’ve known who died
I sometimes understand
that they’re dead and sometimes
don’t, or not consciously — whatever
consciously means in a dream.
Sometimes their faces seem
bruised or lumpy in places
though it isn’t really visible
as if shadow and light
could be confused.
I tend to ask them questions.
They never say much. I’m always
surprised they’re so quiet.
They seem preoccupied.
On awakening
I feel sad but transported
in a maybe childish
slightly bewildered, but proud
voluptuous way, mostly
grateful to have been able to be again
with the one who’d died.
What were they thinking as we spoke?
They weren’t thinking; they were dead.
It was a dream. This is
what they were thinking.
Poem
I’d always been drawn
to misunderstandings, almost
as an aesthetic, something
I myself didn’t quite fully
misunderstand until now, when
looking back I can see it clearly.
Misunderstanding
after misunderstanding
both external and in-
— It’s exhilarating, funny
and the swirls and eddies
rival “Starry Night”
Or Klimt. Oh, dear God
thank you for being
something other
than what you are is
all I can say, and I don’t
mean maybe.
Kurt Schwitters, Opened by Customs, 1937-8. Paper, printed paper, oil paint and graphite on paper. Tate.
[“I miss Sabel Starr and Elliot Kidd”]
I miss Sabel Starr and Elliot Kidd
and Bob Quine and Johnny Thunders,
Anya Phillips; imagine
a party with them, we’re all sitting around —
like those paintings that ’70s Scandinavian
guy used to do of glamorous young
dead artistes hanging out in a diner.
I recently acquired a black and white photo
of the interior of CBGB at 4:00 AM closing
time, 1977. Everyone was gone except
for Merv (the manager) and possibly Karen
or a couple of waitresses
or bartenders in the distance tabulating.
It was just litter and bright overhead lights.
I love that picture because it restores
something of myself to me I wouldn’t
have otherwise. Now
it’s pandemic time. A lot of people must
be looking back. Bill Knott is dead. Denis
Johnson too (he was born
the same year as me — Knott
was some years older). I didn’t
know them but I encountered them
both. I never thought a person’s
era was all that significant to consider
about them, but it is. There are things
only the people who were together
young, in the time, can understand. And
who else is there to laugh about it
with? No one. Maybe
it’s just as well — we do tend to kind
of get twisted with age.
Half of us would have problems with
most of the others. Did at the time.
It’s all a mess. It’s
crazy my feelings now, lockdown
has released them: I can’t get enough
from anyone — all the people I know.
A mess
as I said. These are things that no one
should know, but that’s part of poetry, for
better or worse. In my solitude
I’m stripped bare, but now
you’re here too, to some degree.
Poem
I always feel like what
I write is actually only two thirds
of itself because the other part
is the writing’s position
in a story. I mean the poem
is part of something else
that determines
and completes it, and
that other thing is indescribable. Say
you are reading this now, which
is a pretty safe bet, but
no; in fact, I am writing it.
