"When all the archetypes burst out shamelessly, we plumb the depths of Homeric profundity. Two cliches make us laugh but a hundred cliches moves us because we sense dimly that the cliches are talking amongst themselves, celebrating a reunion... Just as the extreme of pain meets sensual pleasure, and the extreme of perversion borders on mystical energy, so too the extreme of banality allows us to catch a glimpse of the Sublime."
~Umberto Eco, Travels in Hyperreality
September 1, 1939
W.H. Auden
I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odor of death
Offends the September night.
Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
>From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.
Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analyzed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.
Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism's face
And the international wrong.
Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.
The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.
From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow;
'I will be true to the wife,
I'll concentrate more on my work,'
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the deaf,
Who can speak for the dumb?
All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.
Defenseless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.
EATING IT
Can't eat death
Like teacake shadow,
Can't eat that.
Chomp Chomp of Russian novel
Can't eat Russian novel snow-on-horseflesh
Nor vodka eyeballs of madman eat
No no.
Can't eat brain itself and can't eat
Thoughts of mom-milk, gone, all gone,
Hush now.
Yet the banquet goes on.
Yet the banquet goes on.
Can't eat sleep.
Sleep eats me.
Day it eats
What Time can't be.
Dread is what we eat most. It tastes like
It won't stay down.
~Stan Rice
***
La.
My fiction:
China bones
Since his eyes were like perfect packed suitcases
Time is a river without banks
College girl's minuet
Vasco Da Gama's sense of smell
Brushy Fork
The Inch
Save your tender loving care for the nuclear fireball in June.
The Daughter: Me. The Game: Shantih
I need more violence, more violins.
Mickey Moone
Each one was the scene where you hold your breath
My Bolero
To the drive who keeps taking me
Prosenoder's Cup 2003
We are only guilty of living. It's unavoidable being art.
At night, her eyes closed, she would
All these things we'll one day swallow whole
The trouble with Satan's son
Fit for an island
The Jogger
Nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands
Wal-Mart greeter throwdown
Excerpts from my book of fiction "Item of Closure," 2001:
Remember me, I used to live for music. Remember me, I brought your groceries in.
There is a panther stalks me down
Her photography captured little beautifuls and me
Dream, discord, and a cricket concerto
Ducks can swim. What about her pearls?
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