Chinese Whispers: Poems (8 page)

In London just now is cold.

In London just now a gull spring

in London on the back of the bat

in London on the back of that.

When they and London remove the bat back

the bat backer became the bat back.

The butt packer begat the back pack

under lest the noise disturb those that bat back.

In the backing the true bat resides

under a cleft the cliff nose

gannets nosed underside.

The cliff-size size briar sizes up size,

decides size is lies under briar thighs.

That was a lot of that and lack

come down the stair decorum

and lack of reasonable store bin

under the store the straw was been.

Me like methink it all past being

and beyond into the been that he sinned,

the being that has seen

under the hedgerow greens as feline

is opposed to oppressed being been

and never two of us no no more we’ll have been.

The barn exploded.

The big store ripped apart.

Gravel on the lawn made its mark

yes that and festoon of grit in the sky

while the riders came riding by

and nobody was appointed to fill the exam

no others why no other have ever been

why the irritated sky

and we’ll never be the fly

not two slates ever to fly by

and no more store no more in store by the fly

they fly by and take just as your daddy did

and stand by the chest

just make sure to be to the thigh

came crawling across clock’s tempest.

It comes down to

so little:

the gauzy syntax

of one thing and another;

a pleasant dinner

and a frozen train ride into the exhaustible

resources.

We’d had almost enough,

tossing the cap to first one

and then the other one,

but still weren’t determined

to give up the drive.

It had so much we wanted!

But besides that, was

fickle, overdetermined.

So I passed on that.

It was worth it.

Angelic eventide came along after afternoon,

a colibri fluttered questioning wings,

all so we might be taken out,

aired.

And when the post-climax happened

in soft shards, falling

this way and that,

signing the night’s emeralds away,

we took it to be a sign of something.

“Must be a sign of something.”

Then the wind came on, and winter with it.

“Why, weren’t we just here,

five minutes ago?”

I thought I’d have another look,

but that way is all changed, and besides,

no one goes there anymore,

it’s too popular.

Just one fragment

is all I ever wanted,

but I can have it, it’s too much,

but its touch is for another time,

when I’m ready.

Crowd ebbs peacefully.

Hey it’s all right.

Those who came closest did not come close.

The unknown leaned out to them,

then it was post-afternoon. Yes, Jerry built it.

There are many of them in Old Town.

What with one thing and another

you gave me all sorts of fur presents, you know.

It was good to come back. Gumball machines furnish

the library’s stark living style.

You can’t compete with what the

car tells its owner. One by one you are mortal

if the watershed idea catches on

and if we are credited for our utterance.

They thought serendipity was the most beautiful thing in the world.

They were right. As the wheel takes hold,

other inspirations spike it.

There was no year like it for taxation.

FDR decreed a large public works program

that had to be supported with funds from somewhere.

Inevitably, these took the form of taxation.

As when a redbreast calls, there is someone to hear it.

Calico got pasted over the mouse hole.

What are we doing in a theater more than one

wondered. Leaves fled like falling stocks.

The album sinks through fog, its unclasped pages

oozing afterthoughts: “If he weren’t such a sacrificial lamb

we’d have been delivered sooner. As it is, he grasps at straws

or fluff to keep his conscience afloat, which, in any case, seethes

in the authorial chant of bees.”

Don’t make him jump through hoops, I heard another one say

of me. Hey, I was just getting down to business.

A cab appeared at the door, as though summoned.

That it gave me quite a turn I don’t have to tell you.

You know you’ve arrived at bedlam when the arc lights

expire. Alternate-side-of-the-street parking has been suspended,

as has parking. Other than dishpan hands

I have naught to fondle you with. The memory eddies,

sinks, bobs up again, is carried away for good. Now,

what was I telling you? You’re telling me. And beyond that point

of darkness, good citizens don’t go. It’s implanted

in their genes, to flower along the way. And a good job

it’s not, old sod.

Like Knights Templar, we took our time, making sure

we were getting there. Sooner or later the proof dissolves

in the pudding. Made to look inconvenient, we had our say

again, and it was all profit and loss; the streets

had nowhere to go. We lived like nabobs, piling excess

on excess, till one fine day there was nothing left to wake up to.

I suppose it’s for that we’re being punished,

only this punishment is more like a thrill,

the slow beginning of a roller-coaster ride.

Be admonished then, but don’t take

it too much to heart either. Their records need you and your kind.

It might have made

Cindy’s testimony

less credible,

and now seems at low ebb.

It may be just cold enough now.

Stars may have become polluted.

You go on your nerve.

Take no prisoners.

Fine. I don’t want any prisoners

anyway I thought.

Stretched by history,

teething a new day,

what is convoluted gets to be convoluted,

and our brief passion left its scar,

firmly, on murk

which was OK until that other day.

Father of the bending serpents—

as they look back on the 21st century

what will
we
see?

Now he’s retiring and she’s retiring and their kids are retiring—

I say sir I don’t feel

though I have never felt better.

Better to be the cusp of someone’s tongue

and the materials of a new room begin arriving.

A merry-go-round reminds itself of flies,

listing dangerously in its element.

Thousands of years engrossed its sullen size.

In boiled wool and woolen lace, clockwise

our elders cinched a quad with ice o’ersprent

as merry-go-rounds bethought themselves of flies.

Glimpsed sharp in ragged dawn the old franchise

builds for us what they could have hardly meant.

Thousands of years engross its sullen size

that demon domestics haste to neutralize.

As in old flickers, laughs and colors blent

in a merry-go-round, doom themselves like flies—

though it’s not urgent; there’s time to entomologize.

We need only yawn, following the docent’s

trail, and thousands of years engross our sullen size.

Age sags; little’s left to elegize.

Waking from waltz-dream with time to repent

our merry-go-round bestirs itself, then flies.

Thousands of tears erode its sullen sides.

I

The philosopher walked over to me and tapped me on the brow

with his pencil. Now does
this
remind you of anything?

Have you ever seen anything like this before?

Yes, if it’s in sync with the marrow of the growing world.

I can relate to that mattress. I do. I mean I do, sometimes.

And what day of the week might this be?

I’ll make a wild guess—it’s Thursday. You’re wrong,

though it
seems
like a Thursday. They sent me the
Times

upstream all the way, it arrived and began to smile, I

was startled, I always am when it’s like that. But this

time it was different, more was at stake, though I don’t know

what, exactly. More overtime, perhaps. Get

on with it, we don’t have all night. You think

I
like watching the candles gutter? Well, do you?

Yes, I think you do rather, but that’s not the point.

Well what is the fucking point? It’s that you were here,

earlier, and took too long to get here. By then

it was too late, but you’d been here earlier, hoping to cast

it as earlier, and yourself in a favorable light.

That light is now swaying from the chandelier, like an orangutan

awaiting further instructions, in mid-mischief, wondering if

all this is porridge after all. The philosopher is your boyfriend.

Remember you were hot before. Now it seems like an unseasonable crust,

with breath still to be counted, the weird smell,

and the way it all tallies with the trellis up the chimney.

You
, on the other hand, were out of the country, or so you say,

and so couldn’t possibly have witnessed the flare

that in fact no one saw, and can get on with it. My

conscience is clear. I’m hungry, and lunch, or supper, is waiting.

II

Between sleep and rubbish is the remembrance,

scent to one who can smell. What a relief, though—if snow flies

and they decide to walk back into it, that will make one more game.

Yes,
mon chou
, the way it is has been decided. When they come up for air

at the same moment, a truce is called,

and the staircase draped with shagreen. Others

than they may of course make decisions, but only in the infinity

of ways which concern us. We blacked out for a moment.

Still others avoid laxatives and beef. We cannot logically condone

headway in the matter. I said you brought back library books

that were due on June 23, 1924, and you owe me four trillion eight hundred

thousand twenty-three cents. Luckily a moratorium

was introduced in the last decade, forgiveness was invented,

and you are free to sulk by the ladder.

As it was I took the elevator to the top,

walked around and didn’t see anything and came back down.

Then, acting on a hunch, I went up much faster

than the first time, and spotted two lovers entwined on the horizon,

but let them go, training the big bertha instead on a rabbit

limping across hallowed ground, was dismissed, took early retirement instead

to avoid embarrassment all round, and now am as you see me:

a blind cook serving pornographic muffins to paying guests

over cocktails before the sea opens and drinks us, then closes over us,

smacking its lips like an idiot.