Flow Chart: A Poem (3 page)

One lives thus, plucking a mean sort of living from the rubbish heaps

of history, unaware that the parallel daintiness of the lives of the rich,

like fish in an ocean whose bottom is dotted with the rusted engines and debris

of long-forgotten wrecks, unfolds; yes, “
And I in greater depths than he
,” I suppose,

yet it doesn’t help deliver one back either to the after all sane and helpful blank square

one is always setting out from, having in the meantime forgotten those other

precepts, sane and insane, that intrude as soon as one begins to think

about anything at all. It is always on the rim of some fleshpot briefly

mentioned in the Bible one is seen to squirm, a pinned worm, so that

one is pitted against others as against oneself: lonesome, hungry,

and a little bit thirsty until the day of doom universally misconstrued as a

time of relief and pillars of dust rising straight up out of the desert valleys

where one’s feet take one, and all that mythology of broken tracks,

jettisoned equipment, and the long-uninhabited wadi whose watering-trough

is merely mud now and a few puddles of camel-stale, materializes.

Latest reports show that the government

still controls everything but that the location of the blond captive

has been pinpointed thanks to urgent needling from the backwoods constituency

and the population in general is alive and well. But can we dwell

on any of it? Our privacy ends where the clouds’ begins, just here, just at

this bit of anonymity on the seashore. And we have the right

to be confirmed, just as animals or even plants do, provided we go away and leave

every essential piece of the architecture of us behind. Surely then, what we work for must be met

with approval sometime even though
we
haven’t the right to issue any

such thing. There are caves and caves, and almost none

of them has been explored yet. That doesn’t give us much

to go on, yet we insistently cry that someone else’s rondo is already

being played, and that over and over, so how come nobody does anything about it,

relaxes us in our shoes and tells us about bedtime? Surely, in my younger

days people acted differently about it. There was no barnstorming, just quiet

people going about their business and not worrying too much about

being rewarded at the end when it came down to that. No, we were wandering

away, too busy for such things, toward the altar,

or better yet into the nave whose fruit-and-flower

decoration led unostentatiously and facilely into the outdoors it

anticipated. No use just sitting around juicing the lemon

or the orange for that matter as long as one was intending to get up and play

again. And now that the time of reckoning nears, it wears a changed coat;

its color is brighter. No but there must be some structural difference as well

in the ordering of the colors and how they were laid on, only

no one can conceivably care enough about this to talk about it. Well I do

and can, but the un-nice fractions almost always assert themselves

above the din of this great city and I have trouble remembering

even my name until some passing girl kindles its fancy, what my name was

to me when I first began to think about other things. There is not postage for this boredom either really so that it keeps

returning, might be said never to have gone away at all,

except for the media with which it keeps getting compared. I say, the other

reaches really tickle you, when you have a chance. And all this time

I thought he was only farting around disinclined to have a serious opinion

on anything, and even more so to give it vent or utterance. And my sight clears

for the first time in a thousand years and it’s true, I can see up ahead

where no one waits and the long flags flap and droop in the dust of sunsets

and so may it be forever and ever till we get it right. Mine’s isn’t the option to

show you how to escape or comfort you unduly but with a little time

and a little patience we shall make this thing work. Even though you thought

everything you touched was doomed to fall apart or not start, time has

a few surprises up its sleeve and deserves to be spat on for not having more,

or would, if it didn’t. Yet it does. There are promises clad with the finest

silk you can imagine and silver ornaments hitherto undreamed of, if only you can

match them with something of equal loveliness and curiosity from your own

secret collection. And of course this does take time, but in the end one

senses it more richly bedizened than ever before, and in line for a promotion

out of the ranks of futility into the narrow furrows of bliss and total sublimity

crystallized in good humor that took over early on in the century. Of course,

no one is aware of this. Yet. But give

everybody time, even no-shows, and it will all flow backwards, that

caparisoned night, a trial for some, and otherwise it all gets out

into your childhood and the beach that was its launching pad before

hunger and fears took over even as delight fostered the notion that

there was going to be enough for everybody, for children to pause

and have a happy home no one talks about anymore. Best to rest, sleep and laugh

about it to someone who no longer matters and then you’ll find that you are indeed

in it and have been all along, only that the show was on a kind of treadmill moving

at the same leaden pace as your jokes and ambitions, which is why you

never knew about it and therefore consented to come along anyway

on this dangerous outing to the very sources of time. Don’t

excuse yourself, nothing could.

I’ve never really considered telling you. And now. He hated

doing it—he wasn’t sure why. And so just as the mirthless sequel was being

disinterred, a feeling of rage came over him, but also of relief, because

you couldn’t do it now. They’re lost somewhere out there between the trees

and muck, besides all cars have them now. And the colorful glasses and telephone

are there; he came for a fitting. It was proper, and in its time. But no

matter what you do someone will be malevolent about it, and try to stop you,

though there is no stopping them. He came for the fitting and tried

it on and it fit, just like that. What a laugh. Oh yes she laughed out

of the closet I’ll be there in a minute dear. You see

how fond of him she was, and he, well he just took it,

like most things, change, pretzels. And she thought he was

so good at it it kind of faked her when the last windshield whizzed

by and it was all over as though in a rush. And as meat is sung,

and lips only slowly parted for the alphabet of night chimes to come

clanging down like an immense ring of keys, so with the gale-

whipped morsel, notion of itself, that dogs us and all humans, and we never

quite get out from under it, there is always a thread of it attached to you

and when you remove that, another one as though magnetized takes its place.

Begorrah it was dumb to be in the pit with him, for then the sentence…

But who knows what all they may have tried before, what

avenues exhausted before it was time to mend and really be the interloper,

and for all its sparks it was never considered dangerous.

Everybody gets such ideas on occasion, but here was the little shot-glass

of night, all ready to drink, and you spread out in it

even before it radiates in you. It doesn’t matter whether or not

you like the striations, because, in the time it takes to consider them,

they will have merged, the rich man’s house become a kettle, the wreath

in the sink turned to something else, and still the potion holds,

prominent. And you want to see it and to have it be talked about this way,

not drool aimless compassion. So on that night we were almost boarded up,

packed off to a vacation—where? Moreover no men heard of it,

only teen-age girls and male adolescents with fruited complexions and scalps,

who were going to make it difficult for one should an occasion arise.

But a funny

thing happened, none of us were around to count, all incommensurate with our

duties as we should forever be, and not wanting much training. The dark

was like nectar that evening, rising in the mouth; you thought you had never heard

so pretty a sound. Then, of course, quietism was again broached

and that soon, and quite soon the pink of the salmon ignited the whey

of the plover’s egg and the black of old, scarred metal; then, how it

feels relaxes one like a warm, numbing bath, and her argument, and yours,

and all of theirs—why, why not just consider, or better yet, just

hold, hold on to them? For the speed of light is far away,

and you, sooner or later, must return

to a deteriorated situation, and, placing your hand in the fire, say

just what it means to you to be connected

and over, and kiss the burning edges of the unfolded, stiff

card, and be unable to avoid doing anything about it or acknowledging it

when we have passed, when all is past.

And why did

he, by what was he it? Why, we push our little tales around

and back and forth and so on

by which time it literally
implodes
, I mean by then he was settling in

and no one called his attention to it. In your repertory of groans is one

glottal one—you’ll feel the difference. And if it can’t liberate itself from us,

just turns to dust in the air floating with the kind of negative majesty one thought

one would not see again in one’s life. But I had the horn—we had a deal we agreed on, yet

no record of its existence is sketched, and I am all I am

in the meanwhile and 13,000 fucking miles away like a planter

on his porch. And so I am unaware of the flambeaux and, possibly, the stealth

that brought me here. And abandoned me—I—

I’m awfully sorry, big boy, but my plans concern George and his wife over by the other side

of the lake slipping into a nervous breakdown, and I, we, well as you know, we

sit here determined, not like the rind

of the melon but not liking to say anything about it into the miraculous dawn

that—gasp—gathers us into its stocking. A pervasive air about him of studious

lyricism avoided us, and he turned, ever so quickly, to the hen house, and off

in the open was seen running, and then, it’s so easy, was probably not recorded

except between the trees of a clearing. And who, what patron saint, will pick up

the pieces of the glittering lighthouse and restore us to them in a kind

of Roman calm, that we were meant for? And suddenly SHIT it’s the fire and

glass breaking everywhere—it’s as though you were never born but you must somehow

drink a toast to the small nucleus of watch-springs or confusion that

lords it over you now but will be less than an unconsumed coal among ashes, soon,

until the dryer’s fixed. And then all out and along the

cinder path that led so alluringly down to the bayou, all we can know is hope

and fevers for a coming tomorrow of saffron and moist rage under the corner

of someone’s hat that wasn’t meant to like you. Me, I

rest in the sun regardless. We saw a car drive on to the city that

is the password. Ice-cubes played tag up and down my spine. I’m

here to collect the reward. Obey my every command, no matter

how strange it may seem, otherwise we’ll have been banished before the judgment,

not know how fortunate we were in our old simplicity. Other vanished

zinnias were interviewed and nobody had anything, good or bad, to say about us,

which doesn’t cause any tears yet one wonders: what if one
were
back there again?

On whom might one rely? What distractions would be concocted for us

if we had strayed? And who is the baron that manipulates our daily lives

from afar? Why even depend on industry and innocence when rebellion is growing

in the ditch just outside? Who knows about us? Who ever did? Weren’t we

lying to ourselves when we thought we caught someone being just slightly

interested in us one day, and if so, whose fault is it? That we came

too late to an overgrown baseball diamond? And in the meantime shacks had vanished

without a trace from the face of the globe

and now the evening star was combing her hair at the attic window

and no one is to blame, just be calm, don’t

rush, it’s all over or soon will be or just was, in any

other language sufficient to tell it in—just like it was.

It has long been my contention that jackals,

unlike other denizens of the epistemic forest, are able to predict

the future of metabolizing some kind of parasite that grows on other people’s

children and devours them. The eyes are a profound cobalt blue, accepting

of moral dilemmas and sprouting proverbs

slowly, like crystals,

but no, not innocent,

and not lacking in character. Twenty years ago, you will recall, the eyes

thought they made a difference, were glazed, forgetting and impudent,

relieved of parenting. Arenas were quite happy to comply

though a little bewildered. At first at least. One very chewy advanced proposition

seemed to falter, then faded into the background noise, but—here’s the thing—

continued
, to this day. Bald and bleeding. I don’t like it, no one