Zeitgeist Spam

Upside-Down In A Web Of Light

1.

“Walking in circles
“More than a century

“Round and round
“Round and round

“Wearing out the grass

“Crazy in my heart

“Crazy in my head

“Roasting
“While love turns the spit

“To dote on such a bubble ...

“Now - nothing but tears"

Outside the window: crow’s laughter

Inside the room: Joy’s lovely head

I read her this draft

“‘To dote on such a bubble ...’”

“I like it,” she says
Sliding closer on the couch

“But it’s sad ...”

2.

She works on a piece
For the Par’bo Citoyen

I translate
From the Anthologie

Click click click

Click click click

3.

After two glasses of rum
Chin tends to make speeches

We’ve taken to calling him Senator

“Yes, Senator”

“No, Senator”

“Whatever you say, Senator”

He draws himself up then
To his full five feet four

“The Senator will recite a few poems now

“Your poems, you rhymin’ bastard”

What happens next
Would have made Zurich Dada proud

Grunts
Moans
Whistles
Screeches

Table-pounding with both fists

It’s been known to silence Vive la République Heaven
In seconds

4.

Lips ...
Nipples ...
Bellies ...
Thighs ...

“You're mine

“I’m yours,” she says

I’m supposed to be cool
And postmodern

But this is heaven

5.

Joy’s writing a book
The Pornography of Global Power

“You can’t kill the beast,” she says

“Cut off one head
“A hundred more will grow

“But you can’t be silent, either”

6.

“I have a place on South Mountain

“It’s just a little shack

“A spider lives in the window

“It hangs upside down in a web of light”

“Can I come visit?” she asks
Then laughs
Then kisses the top of my head

“O beautiful head,” she says

“O beautiful head,” I say

I toss Chaucer at her

“Your yen two wol slee me sodenly
“I may the beautee of hem not sustene”

“Did I tell you Katibo Vert called?” she asks

“If they win the election
“They want me in their government”

I go to the bedroom
Bring back her shoes

“These boots are made for walkin’
“O Most Important Personage

“Dinner’s on me”

7.

Just off Place de ‘40
Is a bar called Rifles

The old revolutionaries
Who can still get about
Drink there

Once a month
Joy brings flowers
From Paradise Gardens

“It’s a granddaughter’s rage
“Against the dying of their light,” she says

Her grandfather is a kindly old gent
Known as the Assassin

“I was a corporal in the Apes,” he says

“They called us apes
“So we were Apes

“They called us clowns
“So we were Clowns

“See that man in the corner
“Drinking the Par’bo Gold?

“He led the Clowns by secret paths
“Through the hills behind Pointes Noires

“We caught the Caludans in a crossfire

“I don’t like to remember
“What I saw that day”

He shrugged
As he must have shrugged a thousand times

“But you do what you have to”

8.

I watch the sky grow dark
And the full moon rise
From behind the old stone wall
At the back of the garden

I tell the first star I see
“I love her”

9.

Joy reads me a section
Of Pornography of Global Power
A collection of fragments
Modeled on Benjamin’s Passagenwerk

She calls it “Who Needs Adjectives?”

It includes descriptions of tire fires

(“Eternal flames,” I call them

“Remember,” she says
“No adjectives!”)

Statistics on Third World
Bottlefed-instead-of-breastmilk babies
That die each year

(“I know, I know …
“No adjectives!”)

And so on
And so on
And scooby dooby doo-bee ...

“Paradis terrestre,” I say

She says, “I depress myself

“Let’s go outside
“And sit in the garden”

10.

Joy, the Assassin and I
Attend the opening of Les Katiboises
Donald Evans’ portrait heads
Of “the women of proud young Katibo
“Who set themselves free”

I continue to quote the placard
On the entrance wall:

“He made three series
“At three different periods
“Of the same seven heads

“The first president’s wife
“A tribal chieftess
“A university student
“Two rural women
“A Par’bo patrician
“The new polyclinic’s physician

“Each series has its own wall”

“I’m 85 years old,” says the Assassin

“I’m supposed to be done with love

“But my word, they’re all so beautiful

“It drives me crazy
“And it will til the day I die”

“My word,” he says again
Stopping in front of the portrait
Of one of the rural women

“I believe I knew her

“What was her name?”

Later that night
I watch Joy sleep

I watch dreams dance
Behind her eyes

I think the same thought
Over and over

“O beautiful head

“I’ll dote a while

“You are the answer
“To all my questions”

[Note: “Walking in circles” and “I have a place on South Mountain” are translations of anonymous poems from the Anthologie de la poesie de Katibo (Paris: Noirs Noires, 1974)]

“Totally Entirely Quite Completely Not At All”

NOTE: To read this poem go to http://www.bigbridge.org

Grenadine Szorora: Some Poems

NOTE: To read this poem go to http://www.bigbridge.org

Quiet Days In Stad Geest

1.

Saturday morning
I wake with a note on my desk
I don’t remember writing:
Three women’s names

Who are they?

I must have risen from a dream

I drink my tea on the patio
Of the nice “case study house”
(Clean lines
Walls of glass)
I’m renting
And watch birds hop
From branch to branch
In the turning trees

Summer is short in Yteke

Borul arrives at 11
To work on a new collaboration

How describe what happens next?

Recall Szymborska’s Nobel speech:

“Someone sits at a table or lies on a sofa while staring motionless at a wall or ceiling. Once in a while this person writes down seven lines only to cross out one of them fifteen minutes later, and then another hour passes, during which nothing happens ... Who could stand to watch this kind of thing?”

So I’ll spare you, dear reader

We’ll work

You watch clouds float by

2.

Lunch, as usual
Is at the Mount Edzo

Paul is there
As is César
And so are the two Roberts

Edzo tells us
He’s cancelled the house special

“I’m changing my menu,” he says
“How can I serve mercury?
“I’ll make you each
“A nice salad …”

César informs us of a friend
Pulled off a plane
Because he “fit the profile”

3.

I attend the opening
Of “Waning and Waxing”
At the Queen Yteke Gallery:
Promising work
From a young American photographer

“I’ve gone digital,” he says
“I love it
“But do you know what I miss?
“The negative

“Milton says
“What in me is dark
“Illumine

“That happens in a negative”

We speak of bridges, skies
And the legacy of Cartier-Bresson

He leaves next week
To shoot the disappearing permaculture
Of the North Cape indigenes

I’m invited to come along

4.

A pale white sky
A lone gull
A slate sea
And ice
From horizon to horizon

The red knit cap she wears
Is redder than any red I’ve ever seen

Ice:

A question
You never thought you’d ask

The red erases the question mark

Leaving
Other
Different
More complicated
Questions

      -Marisus Borul

[Note: translated with the help of the author]

5.

Borul calls his niece The Eyes of Yteke

She’s “in counterterrorism”
Whatever that means

“I can’t tell you much,” she says
“But the closer it gets to the American election
“The hotter it’ll get around here
“Degree by degree”

It has been a strange summer

Convoys of camouflaged trucks fill the highways
And we certainly see more police

But so far
The blood’s on the net and in the papers
Not in the streets

“Blood
“That red thread connects us all,” César insists

Professor Conscience
We call him

But we’re grateful

He won’t let us forget

6.

For 90 minutes this morning
My eyes don’t work right

Have I had a stroke?

I can’t focus

Then I realize my glasses are broken
The left lens has popped from the frame

I find the lens
But I’ve lost the little screw that holds it in

I’ll get my glasses fixed

I’ll pick up new writing tablets

I’ll stop in a moment
At the Mount Edzo

I’ll drop off my check at the gallery
(I hate to be in debt
And it will only take a second)

As I list my errands
Something jogs my memory
The name of an old poem by Kenneth Koch:

“The Pleasures Of Peace”

There certainly are some

The Best Used Bookstore In Achterdijk

The best used bookstore in Achterdijk
Is named for its owner, Uomo Bhob

Bhob loves to smoke his little pipe and talk

Once I heard him tell a young poet
“The stranger these poems get
“The more they sound just like you ...”

What could be more encouraging?

This time in he says he’s just seen Borul

“He’s touring, you know
“Promoting ‘Who Can Take A Letter Beyond The Clouds?’
“I Will Tell You Her Name
“I had him sign my first of your collaboration
“Here’s what he wrote:

If these traductions are not translations
I get half the credit!

“He said if I saw you
“I should give you the name of his hotel”

Bhob always plays great music, too

Today it’s “My Favorite Things”
The Live in Japan version
56 minutes of heaven and hell

“Looking for anything in particular?” he asks

“Not this time”

Bhob tells stories
About the jazz scene in Achterdijk
Back in the 50 and 60’s

“I met Trane once
“He was playing a little place way out in Dokesburg
“The Hungry Eye
“(Like the club in San Francisco
“But the pun doesn’t translate)
“Those were the sheets of sound days
“I wanted to talk about music
“He wanted to talk about Rilke”

The disc changes: Interstellar Space

My m. o.’s to pick up and carry around
Two or three books that look interesting

I absorb a lot by feel

But today I’m Goldilocks

This book’s too hot …
This book’s too cold …
Nothing’s just right
Not even a sweet little Vallejo

“Look at this,” says Bhob
“It just came in
“Naaktgeboren’s new book on Brancusi”

The first photo gets me

A corner of his workshop

I take a piece of marble for a flame

Which I carry ten blocks home
In a hollow I’ve made under my coat
To keep it out of the rain

“We Are Flying At An Altitude Of 39,000 Feet”

Luuuuuke …
Come over to the Dark Side …
Luuuuuke …

I’d like to say
Then I awoke but
That begs the question

I look out the window

Night

I see things

A million feet below
The moon lights up the ice

I see an ancient bridge
Linking lost continents
And long lines of furry creatures
Moving slowly across it

In my lap’s
A book of Oslomon’s poems:
I Need A Purer Song

The sound of a jet engine

Blind Willie Johnson moaning
Dark Was The Night, Cold Was The Ground

Among those furry creatures
Are pseudo-furry creatures
Men and women
Wearing nice warm bloody coats

How do the real furry creatures
Feel about the pseudo ones
Walking among them
Wearing their loved ones’ parts?

I’ve always wanted to see
The northern lights

Now here they are

But they’re so liminal

I hear Page say
“They’re messengers!”

When they finally fade for good
I read Oslomon:

“My love
“Like a bouquet of fresh flowers
“I bring you all the names”

The 1st was our anniversary

I remember the path
Her ashes made

I still can’t figure it out

I guess that’s why they say
Go figure

You’re right, Page

They’re messengers

The Miracle of Katibo

I ran down Chin at last
In a small café on Boulevard Lafour
Called something something Heaven

“Though I’m blind,” he'd said
“You’ll recognize me by my book:
“Athanasius Kircher:
“The Last Man Who Knew Everything”

“I’m glad you’re here”
He greeted me when I arrived
Then he ordered a brace of skylarks
And a bottle of local rum

(Ah, Katiban rum …
One sip - you’ll say goodbye
To all your aches and pains
Two sips - you’ll ask
What happened to my body?)

“Let’s stroll,” he said
After we’d picked the last bone clean
“Even a blind man knows
“When the sun is shining”

A Katiboise named Joy Alive
One of Chin’s brighter students
Hailed us as we crossed the Place de ’40

He introduced me
As “our distinguished visitor”

I hoped that made up
For my rumpled suit and three days’ growth
Of what only a saint could call a beard

Her dissertation
Which he’d come to Katibo to supervise
Discusses phasing in
A self-sustaining economy
To replace one based on sugar cane

As we passed a shop she said
“Look in this window
“Tell me what you see”

“A display of Poppy G3’s,” I replied
Then I quoted the ad I’d seen a million times
“Its brain is bigger than your brain”

“The Poppy G3 in Katibo,” she corrected

I raised my arm
As if in response
To a classroom question

“I have a G3,” I said

“So do I,” said Joy

[Far From These Shores]

Editor’s Note: The notebook is damaged. A leaf has been torn out. All that remains is the stub, which reads:

Let me tell you a secret

Words are dots
People connect them

Boo + +
Palace + +
Ho + +

B[ook?] + +
P[lace] + +
Burn[ing?] + +
Ho + +

Blank + +
Libe [l?] [rty?] + +
Far from these shores
Nights + +
B[ook] + +
Los[t] + +

-Gnostis, 3:52 – 4:28 a.m.

Key:

+ + = Missing
[ ] = Supplied
[ ?] = Conjectured