Verse and Prose
It has become fashionable in recent years, especially at my school, to deride the great T.S. Eliot as an example of an "elitist" poet because his poems are laden with reference and cross-reference, the product of a good old-fashioned education. I mean, he has footnotes -- the ultimate academic bard. Poetry, these people say, ought to be either personal or political, but never pedantic (and even the political poetry is all about your feelings on the upcoming election).
I think this is all a load of rubbish, frankly, and I find that I've become a better poet by cultivating a certain degree of detachment from the ever-present Self. After all, there's only so much material there to work with. Outside the Self is the World, and worlds beyond worlds, spinning in infinite orbits. Writing for the nineteenth time about my failed relationships is so... boring by comparison.
A friend, upon reading one of my poems ("half-broken," which you'll find below), commented that I sounded like "William Blake, the original screaming mystic." I like that. If I can't be personal or political, perhaps I can be prophetic.
half-broken
| 1 | the day came when it began, and the world was half-broken |
8 | and silence reigned for about half an hour |
| 2 | too much diner coffee and waiting in vinyl booths we were all on the edge |
9 | did the rapture come? there was no one left to rise |
| 3 | epochs passed, we smoked and drank and joked about eliot -- waiting for the whimper |
10 | the animals wept, the dogs, the tigers -- |
| 4 | we waited for the crack and whistled past the world's graveyard |
11 | singing o i remember i remember thee, Zion |
| 5 | pay no attention to that pale horse -- he's just passing by |
12 | and a great cry went out over the land as we woke |
| 6 | or if the rapture comes, someone grab my steering wheel |
13 | crying o the hour of the noose has come and we are all on the edge |
| 7 | singing o we're on the eve of destruction o angel pass us by |
14 | and the world is half-broken and we are all on the edge |
Pro Patria Mori 11/11/03
(for Wilfred Owen)
"World War I was just a warmup
for the real World War,"
he told me.
"Before they had real weapons
or anything."
The Belleau dead would laugh
if they were not drowning.
Were nine million killed, then,
with rocks and sticks? Or perhaps
imaginary tanks,
pretend bullets for phantom soldiers?
The gun they shot you with was tinfoil,
dear Owen, and that mustard gas
a foul-smelling ghost.
Not that we can blame the boy, I suppose; in school
we always forgot 1914 for 1941, rushing past
the dirty slaughter toward more glamorous history
as if wars were only fought to make us proud.
You died seven days before the nightmare ended,
and who remembers it now?
Who lives today who lived through that week?
Dulce et decorum est, you said with a terrified sneer,
Pro patria mori. Perhaps not; there is no sweetness
in Hell, and what you bring to it
stays there when you leave.
Even its memory returns home to visit the generation
it haunted, and leaves behind
a forgetful country.
CTRL+C, CTRL+V
Pieced together with infinite care --
two legs here, an arm there,
the curve of the jaw finessed, caressed
by airbrush and paintbrush, placed just so.
Cut-and-paste girl, you had all your layers
flattened to make you small,
easy to pass around and pocket;
no one notes the places where you lost
a little in the process, where your edges
became blurred. Another's pink smile
shines, a stolen artifact masking your own
mouth, and the eyes are meaningless
gems. So perfectly
compressed for swift consumption,
pixel-perfect
and depthless.
The Lady Regrets
(with apologies to Sylvia Plath)
I am a phoenix with a short life-span.
Every summer I could burn myself through and through
and drown in the familiar pyre,
unpeel past need and desire
toward pure red-head irresponsibility.
Must I torch myself again
for any profit on the year?
Am I a creature of blood,
or just a wisp of crackling hair,
a speck of leaf,
a spiritual kindling?
---
Sylvia made herself an Auschwitz
though she could not be a Jew;
she threw herself again
and again onto the blackened spit,
turning and burning for the white-coat gaze
that haunted her usual breakdowns.
She carried her own Holocaust.
Sometimes you need a word that terrible
to name the fire that burns you.
Sometimes there are no words.
Still, I know the feeling:
to stride forward with your hair aflame and a
furnace in your gut,
while behind you streams a flock of tiny men,
their white coats stained by coal.
---
In the streets,
they ask if I've been
"born again." What do I say?
That I died the last time
in childbirth?
I call these my hands but
they are blackened shreds --
it's no longer a pleasure to burn or rebuild.
Here I am,
your pure-blonde Aryan nightmare,
burnt beyond all use or hope of reclamation,
while that gypsy girl laughs and flashes
her Tarot pack behind my back.
This time around
I'm only an abortion,
a salt-seeded field,
a handful of sterile ash.
One More Time
Phoenix stands
on the edge of the fire,
pushes a final branch into the red
core with the last of his strength.
His claws, bruised from the flint,
dig feebly into the dust. This close the
heat feels wonderful -- he's always cold,
these days.
He preens, pulls forth a draggled
feather. The bright plumes have gone grey as ash.
There was a time, he remembers, when he was
a spinning flare of red and gold -- a time
before the tightening pain stole the sky
from under his wings. But would it be worthwhile,
he muses,
to go through it all again -- bones cracking
in the heat, the terrible stench of burning
feathers -- when the only end he'll ever reach
is one from which he must begin again, and again,
and again?
Through milky eyes he watches
the flames leap higher and wonders
what it might be like to die
without the sickening heat of the pyre,
to come to an end that might finally
let him rest. Rebirth is all he knows --
he would welcome a thousand years of sleep.
He settles to the ground
and watches the heart of the fire.
For now,
he is content to be warm.