[The prose poems in this collection were written during my undergraduate years, mainly between 1984-87. I put out a small edition of them in 1991, while still in Madison, Wisconsin. This is the text of that edition. --E.M.-L.]

ANTEATER

MERMAID

COCKATOO

by Eric Mader-Lin

Preface

Dear Friends:

I hope that you commence reading this book with a gargantuan sense of humor. Or with a dry, squeaky little sense of humor more in tune with the times. Humor, in any case, isn't something I would attribute to many of you.

I hope you realize that even in prose poetry the speaker or "I" is not necessarily the individual named on the poet's driver's license or in his passport. In any case many of you already refuse to believe in "the individual" as a political, legal, psychological, or linguistic entity. So be it. Perhaps you more than the rest will have sympathy for the poems collected here.

Some of the people I've shown this book to have thought it sad work all around, some of them have said they were "in support" of what I was doing, some have pretended not to have read it so as to avoid saying anything, and one (my sister) thinks it's great, and tells me that everyone she shows it to down at the Chicago Art Institute also thinks it's great and wants to meet me. A woman in France who got a hold of it against my will asked me, with a significant look, "How do you feel about your mother?" (as if I hadn't ever though about such questions before). And my best friend told me it was "a piece of shit."

"Really," he insisted. "It's terrible. I mean pure shit."

Why would I want to publicize such an unnameable collection of [stuff]? Am I looking for pats on the back? Am I hoping thus to fan my ego? Perhaps I just want to stir things up in my dull little circle, and I'm bummed that no one ever gives me anything to read (nothing other than their endless term papers at least). I think my reasons for publishing this are probably closest to the last. But also I am wondering myself how to name these writings: after not reading them for years, I read them through one recent day and realized that, whatever else they were, they were certainly the most pleasurable things I've yet written. Are they also the most powerful? "Pleasure," "power"--two words I've had plenty of dealings with in the Comparative Literature department. Perhaps "rage" and "jouissance" would better fit the bill? Nawww. But you, dear friends, will name this shit what you will.

Eric Mader,

January, 1991,

Madison

I like cows.

They like me.

I like cows.

They go "mooo" when

they eat.

I like their friends

the shaved sheep.

They got the skinny feet.

I like birds

because they can fly.

But careful looking up,

might get it in the eye.

Be a schmuck,

Learn to cluck,

Wiggle your ass

just like a duck.

Anteater!

Mermaid!

COCKATOO!

IN THE GARDEN

It was morning in the Garden. Eve sat quietly by a little brook, her black hair hanging in wild curls down to her waist, the sun glowing bright gold in her dark brown eyes. Pan and all the wood nymphs and the water nymphs spied silently from behind trees and vines, a host of hundreds hidden from sight. Eve leaned back and sat the apple on her belly. She contemplated the sunlight playing and glistening in the beads of water on the apple. The sunlight warmed her brown skin. She heard birds playing noisily in the trees above, she saw the brown bodies of fish suspended in the clear water of the brook, she watched a bright green snake slither over the top of a log and disappear from sight. Suddenly she brought the apple to her mouth and took a bite, smiling triumphantly as she did. Pan and the wood nymphs and the water nymphs and all the forest burst out in laughter and applause and Eve danced joyously, laughing like a little girl.

POEM FOR AN ACEPHALIC CLASSICIST, IN A LIGHT VEIN

For the librarian who discovered Agamemnon's mask;

For the other who beat the heart of death.

Sysiphus was a dung beetle anthropomorphized by Ulysses's dog Argos as the master himself stood at the gate in rags.

"There, there, good boy," said the great tactician in rags, as he stroked his own penis with an Aztec torture device.

Eumaios--O my swineherd!--was meanwhile ripping his guts out with a nailclipper, while Telemakhos watched from his tower window through a cracked mirror. "Bloody disgusting!" Penelope hear him say.

"What's that, hun?" said the wise Queen, stepping brusquely into the room.

(The question at this point was whether or not Telemakhos should give up the farce. He did.)

"Your king's back, Mother. Look at him down there by the gate with that Aztec expender round his bloody tool. He was gonna acephalate the suitors today, m'lady."

"O rocks!" said the Queen.

Down by the dungheap that wily man's eye was drawn from Argos's cancerous anus up to an omen, a white eagle perched on the roof of his own long-suffering manor. His eyes beheld also the image of his lusty Queen, with her fine sculpted breasts, her mouth smiling.

"I think I'll keep these rags," said Ulysses to the bleeding corpse of Eumaios, the yellow rot of leprosy working its way through his neck.

The great king was just positioning himself to sodomize old Argos when the rot got through to the other side, and his head rolled off to the left.

VIRGIL

Two doves fly and rise sharply against a giant black ember. A man with a golden tooth is out there somewhere. We played games in the sand and felt soft leaves, boughs of tropical evergreens. She had a candystriped dress or maybe there was a candystriped ribbon in her hair, or maybe I am thinking of the lush cherry red of her lips or the protruding red of her nipples standing out on her full white flesh. There was a branch to be perched on over a dark lake, a somber branch against a gray sky. The wind moved ships and night, green seas, across the cover of our book. The night was not so much night as it was a patch of darkness studded with bright stars. The gold was not so much gold as it was the perversion of mushroom and vine. The land was much more land, though, than the cover of our book.

Troy was a dilapidated sewing machine hanging in the background. And Aeneas was a large upper-torso with something of a feather for a head.

THE GEWGAW DIRGE TO OUR

LAST LORD AND BENEFACTOR

I.

Picture, if you will, picture Jesus as a workman building a house in a rich neighborhood going to the dogs because too many houses are being built there, too many dinky houses that end up being painted yellow or green or, Heaven help our souls, yellow with green shutters. Picture Jesus with his giant beer-swelled bulwark of a corpse lying on its side in a rather beached position, and Jesus has such a girth to his Entity that his legs stick out as they would on dolls, the upper one not having that luxury or irritation (we will never know) afforded to the more slim philistines among us whose legs lie scratch on top of one another when they lie on their sides. Jesus is wearing a grubby blue, gray, off-white flannel shirt that, unbuttoned, shows to advantage his huge ventral bowl from the center of which sticks out, no, not a flaw, but the yet hanging last few inches of his umbilical cord, which unlike the glowing umbilicals of the maharishis, or the red firefly light in the navels of the gurus, is merely a hanging little drooper of a dirty little thing which does naught in the way of feuerworks, but merely hangs there, often grubstained, dirty with black grease, like the rest of his fundamental ventral.

The navel, which we can consider in this view, a valid engraving of our own shimmering imagination's reproduction, hangs there as a dirty reminder of the virgin birth, a shameful thing all around, resulting from the horrible repressions and focused flights of fancy of a young girl, who in no way deserves the appellation of Mother Force just by virtue of the twisted and occult means she sank to in order to give birth to this Most Exalted Whale of a son. The psychotic manifestations and terrified dreams of that jittery little would-be office girl Mary in no way merit her the attention she has gotten for her nice little magic trick. It is surmised by doctors, in fact, and many healers as well (though we cannot vouch for their knowledge here) that it is the outrageous method of conception so fitfully employed by the mother Mary that has resulted in the active physiological imbalance in Our Lord Christ which causes his all-night bouts of soul-swelling beer drinking, which have in turn led to his gruesome bowl. We can only offer her censure on this mark, white lilies or no white lilies. "Think of the poor boy," as many of our wise parishoners are heard to say, relaxing wonderfully on top of their white patio furniture. "Think of that poor boy."

What's more, we are not apt to employ the secretly rotting paradigms employed by feminists and other sorcerers to the effect that unisexual reproduction is healthy and common and, funny that they add this almost as an afterthought, possible, given the correct nurturing of a little womyn in a nice little magical environment, one tending to, as they say, creative mythologies and the death of all syllogism. Lord bless our souls but this is not the time nor the place for "creative mythologies" as presently such can only lessen material, ergo real, production. This is not merely our own opinion, our own creation, as you more bacchic lesbians would insist, taking your vision whether you know it or not from your phallic thyrsi--this is the conclusion reached from the combined labors of Sphincter and Bourghese, 1974. We can only censure any overtly or covertly snatchy insistences to the contrary, so help us God.

II.

Jesus is in charge of laying the foundation. A job in no way tending to his spine, Herculean though it may be on better days, because it requires so much bending. This problem has been looked into by M. Bedier in his seminal work, The Spine of Our Good Lord Pontisface, Mouton Mifflin and Sons, 1968. The conclusion finally reached in Chapter 18, a somewhat belated conclusion, I found the text quite windy personally, states that "Our Good Lord should drastically reduce his ale consumption and should spend a couple good hours a day in an extensive exercise program." Several methods of weight loss are suggested in this dreary tome, including the exercise bicycle and the rowing machine. It is our opinion, however, that he would never consent to either of these methods, preferring rather, and this can only be viewed by us as a last resort, astral projection.

III.

It is perhaps our duty now, in this dirge, to present to our gentle readers some of the more piquing aspects of our Good Lord Christ's average day in the employ of Chenequa Highlands Developing. The Good Lord rises with the sun each day. (I beg a slight parenthetical digressive here, as it is, I believe, of the order of things. Despite the contrary insistences of New Agers and others, the sun, in all its nuclear glory though it be, is by no he would never consent to either of these methods, preferring rather, and this can only be viewed by us as a last resort, astral projection.

IV.

It is perhaps our duty now, in this dirge, to present to our gentle readers some of the more piquing aspects of our Good Lord Christ's average day in the employ of Chenequa Highlands Developing. The Good Lord rises with the sun each day. (I beg a slight parenthetical digressive here, as it is, I believe, of the order of things. Despite the contrary insistences of New Agers and others, the sun, in all its nuclear glory though it be, is by no means the true father and origin of that blue-flannelled whale we tend to call Our Lord. Rather, as has been proven by St. Parsimonius in his early work De nada , the Father of Christ is none other than an area whose bornes do not exist and whose center point is the sum of all points. Ego tamquam centrum circuli, cui simili modo se habent circumferentiae partes; tu autem non sic. Nisi, ergo in escondido es, in terribilitata . In, ut amplius scribere, chiarobscurata . In flagrante delictata chiarobscurata. Sed satis dico, satis. Et scusi. ) Jesus takes his lunch with the children, who make whale jokes in languages he does not understand.

A day on the job with our most Sanctum Deis is reputed to rarely attain heights less than miraculous. Whole armies of ants have been seen pouring out of the earth like magnificent chancres of blood. Frequently as of late houses have been observed to be completed months before schedule. It seems that instances of brick levitation have been observed by Wallace, Crookes, Wagner, Butlerof, Varley, Buchanan, Hare, Reichenbach, Thury, Perty, de Morgan, Hoffmann, Goldschmidt, Saiz, W. Gregory, Flammarion, Sergeant Cox and many others. It seems as well that Jesus is wont to stop dead in his tracks on dirt roads and stare fixedly at the dust-covered lower foliage in the ditch of the road until he has gleaned and processed every single detail of the, to our feeble eyes, small scene he was so cosmically pondering upon. In what is assumed to be a prodigious fit of rimbaldian rebellion focussed against mother Mary, Jesus Christ has been blamed--for there are many eye-witnesses who actually claim they viewed him creating the little rapscallions--for the small bands of white dwarf-like humanoids which have as of recently been conducting absolutely horrifying sadian orgies in grocery stores and in the back windows of cars even when young children are on board. Jesus has been observed, for instance (according to the eyewitness report of the famed motocross racer Tom Roscoe) resting his huge haunches on a dirt mound in an unfinished building site masturbating furiously--bellowing out cerberan groans according to our report--while small groups of these pale dwarves ply their lubricious trade on the dirt clods around him, in constantly various libertine configurations. These scenes only occur, according to our spry young ____, when the workers have all gone to their homes and the sun is setting behind the full silos of corn.

V.

The demise of Our Good Lord Christ can only be felt with the most painful sensations in all areas of our town save those few where older pagan traditions still reign. Our women's keening will undoubtedly go on into that dark night until the stars fall from the sky like dead, dry pistils in the dead, frozen heart of fall. That Shanny O'Keogh was roaring-boy drunk at the wake has been finally substantiated by the frequency of reports to the positive. We are sure Our Dearest Benefactor will find it in his heavenly heart to forgive him. That the Good Lord will resurrect in three days has yet to be proven, and many of our more circumspect citizens are hoping that it won't happen in this lifetime or the next.

LA CAMISA VERDE

Sitting in a Spanish course I heard the phrase la camisa verde. I leaned over to the guy next to me and told him it sounded like the name of a restaurant. We both chuckled a little. And then I told him that I was going to name a restaurant La Camisa Verde and I wrote LA CAMISA VERDE on the piece of paper on my desk for him to see. And this is all the further my idea for opening a restaurant called La Camisa Verde ever got.

La camisa verde : the green shirt.

LE PAPIER DE TENTURE DE M. M.J.

The incredible bravery of some people! To suppose that they can walk a sidewalk without all space suddenly disintegrating around them. To suppose that they won't wake up in a closet full of mummies some morning with the hollow crazy laughter of God piped in through a speaker up in one of the corners. To suppose that they won't someday open their eyes up underwater and find a giant shark in the swimming pool; or that some humid night this summer there won't land in one of our fine Wisconsin lakes some horror from outer space which will propagate by morning into a hundred-million furry crab-like creatures hopping through the forests and suburbs and eventually down every city street on the continent. To suppose that just behind their head doesn't constantly fly a little cluster of Boschean devils, careful not to make a single sound. To suppose that they're not an electronic brain rigged up in a vat somewhere. To suppose that they won't suddenly forget their name in the witness stand. To suppose that they can move their arms around any way they like unpunished. To suppose that death isn't far more horrible than we could ever imagine.

A POEM WITH A HARSH ENDING, SO BE PREPARED

I'm sitting on the Union terrace. A woman is reading the New York Times and talking to the sparrows which flit back and forth from tree to table and then from table to tree, from table to ground and then from ground to trash can; from white chair to orange chair to empty tray. The woman is laughing maniacally, talking to the clear blue sky, directing the birds with her index finger as if they were part of a symphony. She's happy: she hears the music. She reads the paper. ICE TRUCK TURNS OVER IN COLUMBIA KILLING 843. Oh, that isn't nice. That isn't nice at all. MERCURY DUMP SITE SEEN AS CAUSE OF UPSWING IN DEFORMED CHILD BIRTH. Oh, what a strange world! What a strange world this is!

The swallows are like little automata if you watch them closely. Their heads twitch back and forth in tiny mechanical jerks--instantaneously. Click, click . . . click, click . . . bzzt . . . click, click. Their eyes go in and out of focus like automatic cameras. There is a tiny set of crosshairs in each eye.

The swallows which the woman brings with her to the Union every Saturday afternoon are only the finest Swiss-made swallows money can buy. She spends the entire week oiling them, fine-tuning them, practicing her pieces in the basement of her house where there are a number of makeshift perches corresponding exactly to the rests and stops available on the terrace. She is happy. She hears the music. She is working patiently, living like a crone, scrimping and saving every penny that she earns so she can afford the set of beautifully crafted parrots she saw in Herr Mutter's shop in a dream. There are quetzals, penguins, wonderful lavender ostriches with smiles and big black eyelashes to be had if only you had the money. She wouldn't think of training her birds to steal. When she gets the parrots from Herr Mutter they will be wrapped separately, each in its own cardboard box. She will cut the waxy red packing string that Herr Mutter always uses and the parrots will hop out one after another onto her kitchen table, flapping their mechanical wings in glee. They will hop about her counters and her cupboards and her sink, all in a flutter about how they waited so longingly for her to open them up and about how they had heard from Herr Mutter what a wonderful and talented woman she was. Why, she was a genius even! Yes, he had said that!

Oh, how nice it will be when I get those parrots out on the Union, how the people will all gape with wonder and the children will crowd around me laughing and smothering me with kisses! It will be beautiful again! There will be penguins and dwarves and beautiful young princesses and such soft feathery nests for one to cuddle into everywhere! It will be Christmas all year round!

In short, the old bag was batty.

EDUCATION IN AMERICA, I

A beautiful young man with a huge white plume in his hat and a golden sword by his side came prancing into our patio party on a gorgeous steed. The guests all thought him a gallant young chap and enjoyed talking with him.

"He's so very witty!" said my cousin Celia.

"He must be a devil with the women!" I heard a flustered old matron say.

Then my little cousin Jenny, who was only four and who had no business knowing such a word in the first place, blurted out: "He's an anachronism, Mommy!"

All the guests immediately hushed up and looked at her in fright, as if she had done something terribly wrong and as if she should be ashamed of herself. Jenny held her ground, though, didn't even flinch, and when the guests looked again the mystery rider was nowhere to be seen.

EDUCATION IN AMERICA, II: YEAR 2086

We where flying in a rocket when We blew the old school up. Then we went to our New future school. We went home to get our glowing suits. On When we went to our rocket Then we were at school. We were doing our space comant doodling. When our siren came on that mean's were going to eat it. pizza Roni day and Soda it's asid when the red bell rang that means were under attack. By illegel elians. One off the elian blew Ronald Regan's head off. With a lazer gun. When we were shoting them with our lazer gun Ships. After it was over we were in the space Jail because they captured us. We were in there until 2016. We were going to break out. We did then we went to our new weapon it was a lazer ship when we were little we got a new ship it was Delta 446 and then we were back here getting our new ship Air wolf go's 6000 miles per hour. And then we got lost then we land near a cabin and we went in and we saw weapons all over. We took some and flew of. We found our way back home. When we got home we stop for more weapon. We got in to our air wolf again and head for the white house. When we got to the white house we shoot with weapon and the white house blew up we flew home and all the president die at the same time.

Courtesy of Duke and Blay, 6th grade.

EDUCATION IN AMERICA, III

The entrance exam was on a small piece of paper hidden out in the forest somewhere. There were a number of clues to find the exam: a low-relief black metal eagle against the front of a white brick house, an electrical box at the side of the road with the number 13 written on it, and a piece of obscene graffiti spraypainted on a wooden bridge which we will not mention here. The Dean of Students was a chubby guy in his fifties who wore welding goggles, Donald Duck ears, and gray shorts with a leather belt. When he pulled the trigger at the starting line I managed to get off to a good start, tripping at least three of the other contestants in the first stretch. Then I thought about it a second and decided to give up the race and chase the Dean of Students screaming bloody murder instead. I finally cornered the Dean on a grassy knowl and chopped off his left leg with a big blubber knife. The Dean let me into the school without the entrance exam, and now he and I often sit in his den talking about the good old days and about how the races should be run this year. He has a really neat pipe collection, this particular Dean.

EDUCATION IN AMERICA, IV

"If there is truly nothing else we can do, we could just sit here all day and stare at the surf," said Haines.

I was irritated at his heavy-handed syntax and I winced a bit in pain. He noticed this.

"Oh, you're soft and sour as a lemon, you! What was wrong with what I said?"

I didn't answer him. I was thinking how it was nice of the Marquis to install us in this upper room. There were no rats up here, and one couldn't hear the screaming of the other inmates.

"Listen, I know you know why I'm here," said Haines. "So lets cut the crap, OK?"

I snarled at him and walked to the stone railing and looked down. I felt a dizziness in my head and saw green stars cluster round the focal point of my vision. The dizziness was more from hunger than the height. The fortress was a big brick structure about 250 feet high. It was known around the countryside as the Big Stone Phallus of Vitruvius. What that meant, they hadn't told me yet. Haines was a plant put in by the Marquis to keep an eye on me. They had found a reference to Julien Sorel in one of my letters to Nastassia (Nastassia from War and Peace) and they wanted to make sure that I didn't escape.

"So you like Stendhal, I take it," said Haines.

As I looked at him he was looking more like I. A. Richards by the minute. In one quick bound I was at his throat. It was only a matter of seconds before I had him over the edge. He fell to his death.

I sat back down in the patio chair and took another sip of the lemonade the Marquis had provided. What would he say about my killing Haines? Who cares! Out on the beach I could see a number of figures waving to me. I squinted a bit so I could see them better. I'm not sure, but I think they were Sri Ramakrishna, Mme Blavatsky, Gurdjieff, Andre Breton, P. D. Ouspensky, Bubba Free John, Mick Jaggar and the Buddha himself. The Buddha was waving particularly avidly, smiling from ear to ear like a big goofball.

The Marquis was a shifty character with a big diamond tie clip, a dove gray Ferrari and a ferris wheel in his back yard for his little girl to play on. He decided to move me downstairs with the other prisoners. I never saw the light of day again.

CHARITY

When I was a boy I was as greedy as all boys, which is to say that I was as greedy as everyone is at heart. Anyways, one Easter Sunday, after the service, my parents asked me how much I had put in my offering envelope. I told them that I had put in 75¢, which was the truth. My parents were not happy with this, though, because they knew that I had a little red plastic briefcase in which I kept all the change I could manage to gather and that in this briefcase I had somewhere around $7.00.

"It is too bad that you only put in 75¢," my mother said. "We would have doubled anything you decided to give to the church."

"You mean if I would have given them $5.00 you would have given me 10?"

"That's right," my mother said.

"Well, then I'll give $5.00."

"No, it is too late now," she said. "You will have to think of that next time. Here is your dollar-fifty for the 75¢ you gave." And she gave me a dollar bill and two quarters.

The church was a big stone building with gold inlay all around the altar. When I went to put the $1.50 into my red plastic briefcase with the rest of my savings I found that all of my money was gone and that in its place was a little crust of bread and a note which read: "Take this, fuckwad."

TERROR IN THE ELEUSIAN FIELDS

"When you get to the Eleusian Fields, Parker. . ."

"Who, me?" he said.

"Yes. When you get to the Eleusian Fields there is a little patch to the left I would like you to mow so that it is even with the rest of the fields."

"Have you flipped your nut?"

"Just do it, Parker. It is this little patch that is ruining my dreams."

THE GRANDIOSE FIGURE

One can at times be a grandiose figure, when one's more crucial movements are accompanied by the strains of an orchestra in frantic crescendo.

Crabs. Hundreds of black crabs recede slowly as you move towards them; they keep ten yards between you and them; you try but you can get no closer. But no matter. You are poised in the light, in Roman armor which keeps disappearing and coming back. You are in one of those exalted moods where a swift act, an acte gratuit, is of the essence, but there is nothing to strike with your sword but the rocks and as you are swinging your mighty sword through the air you are not even sure it is there. But no matter! You continue along the rocks in a mood for conquer and one of your legs is no longer there and you must sit down . . .

It is definitely verified now that your sword is gone, and that the wind from the sea is like the air in a basement, and that the crabs are getting larger as they approach. But no matter.

THE ONE TO ASK

The one to ask is in a room with paisley cloth on the ceiling. He pages swiftly through fashion magazines while typing notes into a Macintosh, notes which suddenly fizzle and wing out of sight, flying at the speed of soundlight into the deepest recesses of the Deepest Memory Bank.

The Deepest Memory Bank is a huge carnival playground of tiny flesh receptors, sensitive as all hell, which fling the gleeful electrons between themselves like so many swings, teetertotters, mad slides, and rollercoaster rides. The Mage knows as well as any that this scene is going on in one's own head.

Own head.

The Mage is temporarily lost on a mad tangent, distilling the syntax of a low paragraph in the back of his throat (or is it a left paragraph? or is it the front of his throat?), in the back of his throat where his silent voice repeats the words over and over. The syntax of this paragraph is something like a tiny guillotine made of slender bones covered with warm tender flesh. The whole thing reminds one of a soft breath, no, a manic thought and a soft breath and tender mucous-covered flesh with a pointy spiny backbone sticklefish superstructure--all coming together at the root of one's brain like a magic emulsion.

Emulsion.

The one to ask, the mage that is, wanders among the flesh and skeletons of other people's nightmares, a whole carnival of rides and torture machines bound to purify the soul. He wanders among these flesh and skeletons of nightmare contorting his body, stretching his sinews, making his muscles sore trying to writhe his way out of someone else's flesh and bone mutation, trying to puncture his way out of someone else's amniotic sack.

The one to ask jumps up from the computer dropping the fashion magazine to the floor revealing black-and-white checkered cotton string-tied pants and shouts "I've got it!"

It: it.

THE GRASS THAT

with its swaying makes the blue wind blow

whispers sweet nothings to Opal's ear

and William Shakespeare, a randy lamb too young

to know,

sets stately eyes on the mining town in the valley

"The town will almost be here," says Whitney.

"It hears nice," says Opal.

The stars that steer the planet through the sky

steer the clouds through the planet's sky

(though they can't be seen for the blue shield

of day)

And Minervus Winston Churchill whisks flowers and

lanterns off an angry desk

"Drawing laughter from the lambs," says Opal.

"Muting that dark night's orb," says William.

The time that stretches space o'er all the pavement

Is nothing

But the fitful dream of the last beached whale in

heaven

(for whom the angels search with high reward

for the finder)

"Constantine," says Opal.

"A real bloated bugger," says William Shakespeare.

And William Shakespeare piddles on the grass.

"Drawing laughter from the bees," says Opal.

"A real offal," says the lamb.

For Opal Whitely.

POEM FOR RIMBAUD, I

I'm going to do a film of Rimbaud's life. The details will be exact: the costumes, Carjat's camera, Abyssinia, the rowboat in the pond in Charleville. It will have a huge budget--enough to get everything just right: a long film with periods of mad jabbering punctuated by long strained silences.

Rimbaud writing Saison in the barn at Roche. A bland overcast day on black-and-white film. The cameras are sneaking up on the barn from different angles, cameramen running over the plowed fields as if gunshots were expected. One can hear Arthur groaning and cussing inside. A single white bird flits out of a small window and flies off the top of the screen. Cut to Isabelle gazing pensively in the kitchen.

The poems will all be in Paul Schmidt's translation. Wanderings in London, pranks, Rimbaud carving his name at the top of a pillar in Egypt. (Only the top protruding from the sand dune.) Large audiences will show up and leave the theater confused.

MIDWEST KOAN

One day a student saw the Master in the middle of an open field lifting a pig up to the branches of a solitary tree. He approached.

"What are you doing, Master?"

"I am picking apples."

Indeed there was a small pile of apples at the Master's feet.

"But why are you lifting the pig?"

"Oh, don't you see! The pig bites into the apple, then I let him back down to the ground, and finally, by various means, I get him to give the apple up."

"But Master, you could just reach the apples yourself. They are so low you wouldn't need the pig. Isn't it a waste of time to keep heaving the pig up to the branch?"

"A waste of time?" The master looked the boy gravely in the eye. "What's time," he said, "to a pig?"

ANOTHER IN A SERIES OF PARKER'S ENDEARMENTS

After I had calmed him down to the point where he would let his toast sit there on the plate, he fixed me with his beady eye and announced that he had been the only one, the culminating moment of a centuries-long dispute, to reduce the determining of a man's character to one decisive question.

"Does he," Parker asked, "make love more often than he makes the bed?"

The words couldn't have been more in character. It was all I could do to suppress an ironic smile.

"But Parker," I replied, "that means both monks and the institutionalized have no character." (Parker thus lacking character on two counts.)

"No so," he finally returned. "Not at all the case. Monks, you see, sleep on cots. And we, we here have the maids make our beds."

MEYERMARES

First it was a problem of finding the orangejuice, which I eventually found. It was tapped from an oak tree, which I eventually tapped from it. The next was getting the orangejuice to the table of two across the road, which was a trouble to cross the road because the road slid away now and then on slips of lava, as the road slides away in Hawaii. The next was finding Hawaii, which was not much of a problem, because the Hawaiian couple at the table for two wanted their orangejuice delivered to them in their home in Honolulu--of all places--because the wife was afraid to leave their home in Honolulu because she was afraid to leave their home for fear that she would sometime have to use a toilet other than her own and toilets other than her own were by necessity sat on by asses not intimately known by her and who could say where such asses had been. As I say, this was not such a problem even though there was an airline strike. Now the problem was that this particular woman was not really Honolulan but a friend of my mother's who really was afraid of public toilets and their unfamiliar asses and the different germs and smells attentive on those asses. Because of this horrible fear the poor woman could never get further away than Illinois, and when she did get as far as Illinois she could not stay for very long. Now the problem was that this woman's precious carpet in her precious house was so precious clean that when she had guests over she wouldn't let them walk on it, resulting in the strange scene that the party would be conducted with the guests standing in the front hall of the home while the hosts, husband and wife, stood in the kitchen, on the other side of the vast carpet, and the party was conducted that way from start to finish, the husband standing there the whole time with a slightly red embarrassed face, trying to be chummy all the same. Now the problem was that this woman had actually had children and it was a kind of standing joke amongst their circle of friends that, "How could she ever have children? The act almost invariably musses up the hair." One night, though, while out at the Club, the husband got very drunk at the bar with the boys and admitted all, how his wife had made him promise not to use public toilets for three months before "the act" so as to insure that all the germs on his ass were dead by that time so that she, in the throes of some kind of passion, would not accidentally touch his ass with her hands and so bring the germs directly into her food supply the next morning over breakfast. Now the problem was that the shifting of the many fault lines in the road made it very difficult for me to get the orangejuice to this table for two, so that when I finally did get there the wife bitched me out for having taken so long. Now the problem was that I had had just about enough of her sort of people on this particular day, so I decided to tell her about an article that I had read in the National Geographic about the methods used for picking oranges in Guatemala, about how the big orange plantations don't hire human labor as even in Guatemala they would have to pay the workers for their time, but about how the big orange plantations hire instead bands of purple-assed baboons, which they train under threat of torture to swing from orange tree to orange tree and grip the oranges in their tight anuses, from which they then drop them in the designated baskets. Now the problem was that I told her next that this story was particularly interesting to me because I happened to know for a fact that Meyer's buys only the finest Guatemalan orangejuice and that in serving orangejuice I have often noticed floating in the orangejuice small gray hairs which looked to me like they very well could be hairs from the asses of Guatemalan purple-assed baboons, a theory which was verified for me by a zoologist friend who specializes in baboon hairs. Now the problem was that I couldn't really figure out how the purple-assed baboon ass hairs could get inside the orange, and I said that I thought I'd ask the husband because I had heard that he had taken a few physics courses in college. The husband replied that it was merely a pernicious rumor, him taking physics in college and all. Now the next problem was, see, that I went on to elaborate my theory of how the ass hairs had gotten into the orangejuice and what I told them was that I thought that since the Guatemalan purple-assed baboons were such cheap labor and had purple-assed anuses which so well fit the size and shape of the average Guatemalan orange, I told them that the big orange plantations probably had the Guatemalan purple-assed baboons anally squeeze the orangejuice right on the plantation grounds and that it was during the squeezing of the peeled orange that the gray hairs from the purple-assed anuses of the Guatemalan purple-assed orange-squeezing baboons had gotten into the orangejuice. Now the problem was that since the wife had never gotten further away than Illinois in her adult life and since she thus didn't know much of the real world and also that she didn't even read much of anything but Ladies Home Journal she was very gullible and believing when it came to stories of the fantastic nature of orange picking and squeezing in a place as far away as Guatemala. So the problem was that what happened was that the wife actually passed out right there on the table for two, vomiting in disgust as she did do, vomiting a purplish pustulous glob of gray-hair encrusted ick. Now this would have been no such big deal for me other than for the fact that because of this little incident the husband left me no tip for that day's services and this table, because of the volcanic condition of the road I surmised, was my only table for the day.

FACTEUR TOTEM

The enemy of sleep--3:30 again--scans the bookshelf for something with lianas, trickling streams of blood, golden nails, or laughing Mayan girls.

The shelf instead is full of Russian forests, rainy London quays, ouija boards, the insane world of Dostoyevsky.

Death's head; samovar; a fat German archivarius.

We started with how the water swirls down the drain counterclockwise below the equator. And some of us were doubtful, myself still not sure. But then it was a question of how the water swirls down the drain directly on the equator: does the water simply shoot down the drain instantaneously without a second gone by, or does it rather just sit in the sink, a perfect balance, unable to find a direction of swirl and so unable to go down the drain.

The answer was that if everyone on the equator drained their drains at the same time even clocks would start flowing counterclockwise, so that soon we'd be in the Garden again, drainless, bookless, indefatiguable, WILD-FUCKING-HONEY .

"Perhaps," replied the Cynic in our midst. "Perhaps. But I have to admit that I find your connection between drains and the Garden of Eden a bit gratuitous."

At just after two in the afternoon on April 3, 1976 a large light-metal cylinder crashed down on the deck of the USS Iowa while it sailed just east of the Philippines.

Isn't it amazing that these fleshpots of ours can and often do manage to move around--or even more risky, to stay in place!--for eighty-some years without getting fatally damaged. A slight turn of the steering-wheel to the left (it happens to some people), a slight spasm of the leg muscles on the edge of the cliff (it happens to one in six), and that would be it: scream of folding metal, soft tinkle of shattering glass. A few pine boughs majestically lopped off. It almost makes you think there is a Divinity up there aiming the bits of satellite, etc.

I myself was once watching a girl on the sidewalk and rearended an unmarked police car instead. The cars were hardly damaged and I got off with only a warning. The cop was jittery about it, though, rubbing his neck with pseudo-whiplash, and I felt he was gonna reach for his gun almost--real uptight this officer--until I told him with nervous chumminess that it was just like in the movies, crashing into a cop and all. This appeased the redneck __________.

O, divine scriptmaster, hold me always in your pocket!

One time, in Mexico, in a place called Real de Catorce, I managed to hold down one more Peyote head than my friend Carlos, who spit up after three, his Indian blood not aiding him on this particular day. I looked at flowers, waiting for the raininess in my vision. I closed my eyes. A ballerina's body, dancing and falling endlessly down a whirling well of jagged rocks, oblivious of destiny.

I was in love.

The lacy ribbons in Kay's hair have not been there since, as a child, her mother would put them there, usually just before dragging Kay off to church. Kay hated church. God was a jerk. Kay could tell that God was a jerk by the bald, fat cheesecake, God's organ, which stood in front of the churchgoers intoning insipidities. Kay could tell that God was a jerk because all those who said otherwise were jerks, and it is only logical . . . . Kay hated those people. They were full of it, she knew.

Kay's creamy white calves, white all summer, stroll around looking for shade under awnings and the like, and generally find shade under her black dress, black all summer.

The Divine Light shall not touch me for long.

(Kay had associated the Divine Light with that stinking cheesecake "God.")

Kay's green eyes are not the green eyes of lemurs, nor are they the green of algal blooms or the green of lianas. They are the green of the third stage of an alchemical process conducted right on a busy street for all to see--o shame!--but shaded by a black umbrella.

If we can get her out of here, Kay will become the rippling green of a warm Panama bay, full of the most charmingly vicious ruby-colored sharks, a real challenge for weak swimmers!

The crystal skull found by the daughter of F. A. Mitchell-Hedges in the Mayan city of Lubantuun is not the keychain relic of a Satan-toting Marquis, nor is it a trinket from the outer space shopping spree of some Mayan princess, as has often been suggested.

The crystal skull is rather an expression of the One Mind, the One Mind being of far less interest to us--and for good reason!--than the bizarre and fantastic possible histories of the crystal skull. I write these histories myself, you know.

In the depths of the crystal skull are contained labyrinthine voids of many dimensions, bright whirlwinds of light that wisp and collide, copulations of light, conversations of light, auric and orphic parapets and towers of pure . . . stuff.

The crystal skull holds the key to this and other similar scratchings.

MORALITY TALE (PAIN AND SIMPLE)

"Never have I labored so much over a theme as I have over the way she twists her mouth when she has nothing to say," said Sven, a photographer, wall full of black-and-white glossies of her twisted mouth surrounded by her serene face, which in turn was surrounded by a number of different and kitschisch grandiose backgrounds: the planets, a womb scene, another womb scene, C-------'s chart of the elements. That last one got me--it made me furious for some reason.

Sven was a trick photographer.

I had trouble not telling him outright that I thought he was going nuts out here in the suburbs.

Jeannie is teaching Spanish in a community college and will be for only three more months, Sven tells me. Then they'll be going to--India, where Sven can photo her twisted mouth before orgiastic ruins: wombs, planets, and elements combined, I suddenly think.

He can either photo her twisted mouth or become obsessed with something else.

"It's the suburbs, Sven. You gotta relax. People weren't made to live in places like this."

"I know, I know. It's amazing out here. It really is. It's like the ground is sitting on top of 46,000 layers of clean white linoleum. Aw, fuck. I'm amazed people don't run amok out here and mangle each other to bits. They're all brainwashed though."

I nod at Sven.

"You know," he continues, "I like to think about how people survive out here, how they think about things. You know? I mean, mythology can't take root out here, it just can't. I was thinking about writing a novel called Twenty-three Homes about this very subdivision and the way people must think about things here. I mean, how do you think my neighbor thinks about his toaster? Especially, how does he think about it if it's brand new? I mean, I don't know about you, but to me there's nothing more horrifying than the sight of a brand-new American appliance on a clean white linoleum counter. There's nothing more horrifying. What does Eliot say? I will show you horror in a handful of dust. Well, clean the dust away and that's the American kitchen. Nothing. Absolutely . . ."

At this Jeannie walks in--buxom, dark-haired, a little frazzled from the long day. She blows a wisp of hair from her face. She's carrying two bags of groceries. Before Sven has time to introduce me, she starts her story:

"You'll never guess what happened. I don't know why it gets me so, but listen to this. I stop in at the neighbors' house, the ones to the left, right? And they've gotten their adopted son. He's five years, from Cambodia, and he's an absolute genius. I asked him all these questions and he gave me the wittiest answers. I asked him how many seconds in a minute, and without even looking at a clock he started counting on his fingers, one count for every second that went by. After a minute had passed, he looked at me calmly and said "Sixty." It was so strange. The Petersons are thrilled with him though."

Thrilled.

At this little break Sven jumped in to introduce me. But I was already gone. I was going to save that boy if I had to mangle the Petersons to do it.

THE MYRIAD ROSES OF DR. SPALLANZANI

Oh, there were many of them! They stretched miles upon miles over his many lands, though he had been but a shepherd when young. I can see him then, balanced on the head of a pin, heavy humming moon in the sky, him on the head of the pin, moon changing tides, causing births and rapes, metamorphoses, sticking its fat belly at us obscenely, him on the head of a pin, herding sheep, hoping for a mansion of rosebuds and pianos, a mansion of the necks of young women with collarbones and voices aching with tension, passion, and sex, him on the head of a pin, her lying back nude with a red rose lying lengthwise on her belly, the bottom of the stem just below her naval, the flower resting just between her breasts. And they would make love that way, with the thorny rose crushed thus between them, throwing them into fits of ecstasy.

When you would ask him why, he would tell you: "Because they're the perfect symbol for erotic love--and people wonder why! There's good reason they are, I'm saying! Look at them: they're red, the color of blood, the color of life; their soft petals are like soft lips and skin; they are beautiful and yet much of their beauty lies in the thorns, in the tension between inviting beauty and the threat of pain. And the pain is always a self-imposed pain, as one must grab the rose oneself to feel its thorns break the skin. There is thus in the rose softness and comfort and the piercing ache of passion on the very edge of its peak. La petite mort, as the French say."

It is thus from Spallanzani, and from the favors of his daughter Nastassia, that I learned the meaning of the rose and so became a poet.

THE REVEREND DWIGHT ENGLEKNOCKER'S 612 REASONS WHY ISLAM IS A FALSE RELIGION, REASON NUMBER 73

73. Those Arab flying carpets are sheer superstition. How could one go fast without being blown off the back?

DR. SURREALISME

"The musings of the Doctor are never to be questioned at," said Mishi, the Doctor's little brown servant. "We always follow exactly what the Doctor says, be it anything: frankincense, myrrh, a little spin in the red jalopy--anything!"

I noticed a red parrot in the vestibule, deformed and fighting for its life against dozens of horrible cockroach-like creatures.

"Oftentimes the patient dies," said Mishi, "but the Doctor never promised success to the patient--at least not success from the patient's point of view. The Doctor promises results!"

I decided to leave at once.

Outside the sun beat down and the dust of the road got all over my black suit; I was almost tempted to go back. I held me course, though, and walked straight to the sea.

There's a limit to everything, I figure.

TRUE GRIT

The one thing I hate is a man who tries to put out his cigar on your leg.

You were a hussar in the Crimean War, an Egyptian jeweler in the 18th century and a bandit from the real Sherwood Forest. I was Marie Antoinette, the Earl of Rochester and an actor in Pericles' Athens.

In the Middle Ages we jousted for a jade necklace.

There ain't room in this town for the two of us.

I HATE IT WHEN FLIES ARE IN MY NAVEL (A LOVE POEM)

I hate it when flies are in my navel. Fishing flies, I mean. Thumbs, noses, earlobes, scrotums or testicles, all that's the same to me, but when fishing flies get in my navel--boy, I hate it when that happens.

And it happens quite often to me. I'm what's known as an "outie."

It happened when we were up at Sabourin Lake Lodge, 150 miles into the Canadian tundra. You have to fly in to get there--there's no roads for 150 miles. Some buddies of mine were already up there and I was flying up to meet them. So we're flying along, about to land on Sabourin Lake, and I see my buddies down in a stream flyfishing for trout. Boy, I hate it when flies are in my navel. I see 'em down there whippin' their long fly rods and I get the urge to dive bomb 'em--just for the hell of it, right? And the pilot doesn't want to do it, but watching them whipping those long flyrods of theirs really gives me the urge to dive bomb them, so I slip the pilot a fifty. He hesitates a bit, but then he smiles and wings the plane around so we're heading towards them again. I see their long flyrods whipping long and graceful over the trees and Sam, that's the pilot, throws it into a nice steady dive. Wheeeoo! We just missed 'em. And they're layin' on the rocks with beer cans scattered all around them, and the pilot's heading back to land in the lake. But I slip him a hundred this time and he turns around to dive bomb 'em again. Swooosh! Like a knife! And this time I managed to chip half of Bill's flyrod off with the airplane prop. Wheeooo! So each time the pilot is about to land the plane and each time I give the pilot twice as much money. Finally, they realize who it is that's up to all this dive bombing, they start getting more brave and start throwing beer cans at the plane as it flies over. They must have been pretty drunk already because not a one hit me as far as I could tell. After a few more dives they're all out of beer cans and I'm all out of hundreds. But there's no stopping now! Now the pilot was getting into it! This time, though, rather than dive perpendicular to the river, the pilot wanted to fly real low right up the river so he could get real close to them and maybe knock them on their asses again. So we come skimming in and manage to clear the little underbrush just before them, and what do you know, hot dog! but they're throwing slimy trout at the plane! Wheeeooo! I love it when that happens. So the pilot is getting more and more frenzied and we're comin' in faster and faster, pressing down lower and lower on them and they're beaning the plane with slimy trout and they got their long flypoles up and swinging at us and what do you know but Cletus is trying to hook me with a fly! Now this was making our dives especially interesting because in his attempts Cletus was actually brushing against the side of the fuselage with his long wisping fly pole. I thought there was no chance he could hook me though but what do you know but within three or four tries the fly wisps through the open cockpit window right into the plane and latches itself right onto my outie navel. And--Wheeeooo! --before I knew what happened Cletus's flypole had jerked me right out of the plane, causing a horrible aching pain to run up my spine to the back of my neck--I saw white explosions of light in my eyes and almost blacked out--and causing the plane to jerk sideways in a very funny fashion and crash in the trees by the river, temporarily knocking out the pilot.

But the strangest thing happened as I was swinging through the air on the end of Cletus's slimy whip. It seems that the intense pulling pressure on my navel caused it to pull out and as more and more of it jerked out it became apparent that I was giving birth through the navel to a fat, slimy older woman with all sorts of birthing slime all over her hair and face and all over her hideous black and white polyester dress! Now, my mother had died in childbirth, and if this is what it means to have a mother die in childbirth I don't want to have anything to do with it! Well, what do you know but she starts cussing at me and screaming all manner of blabber about how I shouldn't be divebombing so violently and all and she's wiping all the slime off of herself and meanwhile Bill and Cletus are standing there kinda guilty-like, not knowing what to say or do.

Well, to make a long story short, I didn't know what to do about the situation so I sent my mother back on the next plane and I phoned my friend Ed that he should take care of her until I got back.

Meanwhile I had a pretty good time fishing with Bill and Cletus.

Now when I got back to Freeport--that's my hometown--I didn't go visit my mother first but I went first to visit my wife. So when I walked into the house my wife says to me:

"How fares thee, m'lord?"

(When I'm gone my wife spends all her freetime reading Shakespeare, to pass the time I guess, and when I get back it usually takes her a month or so to get used to plain English again.)

"I'm doin' fine," I says, "How 'bout you?"

"I'm doing well, me lord," she says.

Now there's just something about that Old English accent of hers when I get back from fishing trips that just drives me wild, so I immediately start fiddlin' with her breasts in the kitchen and her all protesteth-in' and the like, you know, and this is making me even hotter yet, like I'm fiddlin' with the maid in some English manor or something, so I finally get her into the bedroom and we take out clothes off and she looks at the big swelling piece of flesh that's sticking out of my navel from where I gave birth to my mother and she says to me, she says:

"It hath apparently moved up, my lord."

And I didn't know what she meant at first but I finally figured out that she was mistaking this relatively little piece of flesh for my penis and I suddenly became so horrified at this thought of hers that I ran into the bathroom and puked a good two hours, her running around the house like nothing was going on and dusting and the like.

Now things became so painful about now that I couldn't take it anymore so I rushed into the other room and I grabbed the phone and I called my mother at my friend Ed's place and I started to bitch her out about the whole scene, how she shouldn't have done that--hiding in my belly and all that for so long.

Now this caused a big rift in the family and I eventually couldn't stand my wife anymore so I walked out of the place finally in so much pain and now I spend hours upon hours walking the cold streets at 5:30 a.m. dawns, watching the last few stars flicker out against a hazy pink sky and getting so sick inside that my head begins to pound.

WHY THE ENGLISH LACK A SENSE OF GRANDEUR

It all goes back to a story told me by my grandmother when I was young. My grandmother was a hundred percent German, of course. It seems that a certain couple living in England, Guissepe and Pamela Verdi,* nee Pamela Windsor, were having marital troubles of the first order. One night, at the dinner table, their little son Piero asked his mother:

"Mummy, where does God live?"

"Oh, God is everywhere, son," replied the mother.

"Even in this cup?" said young Piero, holding up an empty coffee cup.

"Yes," said the mother, "God is even in that cup."

Then the boy quickly slapped his hand down over the top of the cup, and said: "Got 'im!"

Nee Pamela Windsor was horrified at such impiety in her son, and Guissepe Verdi got up from the table and sulked off to his studio because the English lack a sense of grandeur.

*Apparently of no relation to the famous composer.

EDUCATION IN AMERICA, VI

I am over the Guatemalan border, but the place is nothing like I've seen in Guatemala, rather like the halls and computer rooms of a university. Several of my friends are there, with the look on their faces like they either want to begin a political discussion or are all pausing between sentences in a political discussion. My friend Richard is wearing his blue winter vest and looking at me with concern through his thick glasses, as if he was going to open his mouth up and make some point. I'm walking down a yellowish hallway. I'm in a courtyard with families and children tied up in horrible torture positions in trees, and what is odd about it is that they are young trees, some of them almost saplings, and that the people are all a bit tan and have the white-blonde hair of Swedes or California surfers. There is a blonde girl in incredible pain tied to a sapling. I am back in the building and I am terrified that I am not going to make it out of Guatemala, thinking about how I may make a swim for it in the ocean, or try to get a special, illegal boat, or try to exit the country to the south. I sense that most of my friends are worried about this too, though nothing is said. There is a computer in the room. I can see the green lights on the terminal. There is a man in the room with dark hair, glasses, and a white shirt. He was one of the men supervising the torture in the courtyard. We are all very polite to him through fear, behavior against which Richard is tempted to speak his mind.

WE HERE AT THE REVIEW, VII

It has come to our attention that the Soviet Bolshoi Encyclopedia has neither an article on Freud in it nor an article on the unconscious. We bring this up only because it is one of the more glaring omissions, not because it is in any sense the only omission. Why do the Soviet encyclopedists shy away from Freud? The most obvious answer that comes to mind is that the unconscious is by definition beyond state control, and the Soviets would not want to acknowledge the existence of anything beyond state control. But we are being unfair. An exile friend of ours insists that there was indeed an article in the Soviet encyclopedia on Freud. After reading it, however, the Soviet editorial board decided to shred the article and use the shreds to make the binding of volume "F." Our exile friend comments: "They saw this as their way of doing service to the unconscious, sort of keeping it in its place as an absolute Other, as an unassimilable base of the more conscious material within the volume."

And it must be true. We find that the state of the collective Soviet psyche is to be seen in their very bindings. Grab hold of any volume of any Soviet encyclopedia, and you will find that the bindings are so poorly made that when you shake the book the pages go flying off in all directions.

Boris, our exile friend, writes from Basel: "This loss of pages is doubtless what causes the heaps of unsifted papers and piles of neglected documents that clutter the basements and clog the air vents of any reputable Soviet library. And the clogged air vents are themselves responsible for the oppressive heat of Soviet reading rooms in summer and in the warmer republics. One Soviet author insists that this musty heat makes reading an erotic experience, as it should be, particularly if one is reading socialist-realist summaries of ancient works describing Roman orgies or Saturnalia."

Well, what do you know! There is after all a sort of logic to Soviet textual-sexual economics. We here at the Review had always feared that our archaic liberal minds could never trace the fine genius of even one tiny aspect of the enormously complex and bureaucratic Soviet economy. We are nonplussed. Almost.

IN ELEGY OF EZRA POUND

Colorless

Pier Francesca,

Pisanello lacking the skill

To forge Akhaia.

CAID ALI

Hugh Selwyn

Mauberly

And Flaubert is my

bonne ,

"Il ne peut pas

supporter une maison

sale ," as I said in

a college French

essay, Un coeur simple,

and got a nice comment

from the prof, who's

t'be sure

muddld

in Heisenberg and

Max Jacob and

such like.

POOR SAP.

Pour un Sepulchre

DIADEM

Circe's hair

Venerandam

in the fosse

factitious

dreory

a bit

ART POETIQUE

I.

The tone of the prose poem. . .

And it cannot even be conquered here.

II.

Our humor would not have made the ancients laugh.

III.

"It has come to my attention," said an Ancient, "that the tone of the prose poem approaches that of jokes--this probably being the case in part because of certain Jewish homosexual astrologer poets whose names we won't--"

IV.

Following up on that bit about the joke, it seems to me that the tone of the prose poem is jokelike simply because the prose poem is of the same length and appearance on the page as the joke.

But then of course, as someone said, the word "dog" on the page doesn't bite.

V.

The tone of the prose poem has also been frequently observed to be similar to that of Zen koans, whose length and appearance on the page also approaches that of jokes.

Following is a Zen koan that could easily be turned into a prose poem by changing the names.

SOZAN'S MEMORIAL TOWER

Once, when the monk who was director of affairs in the monastery came to talk with Sozan Nin Zenji about the construction of the Master's memorial tower, the Zenji said: "How much money will you give the builder?"

"That rests with you, Osho," the monk replied.

"Is it better to give the builder three cash, or better to give him two cash, or better to give him one cash?" asked Sozan. "However, if you can speak, build the tower for me yourself."

The monk was dumbfounded.

At that time Rasan was living in a hermitage on the Daiyu Peak. One day a monk who came to the mountain to see him recounted this conversation between Sozan and the director of affairs at the monastery.

"Has anyone been able to speak?" asked Rasan.

"As yet, no one," replied the monk.

"Then go back to Sozan," said Rasan, "And tell him this: if you give the builder three cash, you won't get a memorial tower in your entire lifetime; if you give him two cash, you and he together will be a single hand; if you give him one cash, you will do him such injury that his eyebrows and hair will fall out."

The monk returned and gave the message to Sozan. The Zenji assumed a dignified manner and, gazing far off toward the Daiyu Peak, bowed and said: "I had thought there was no man who could speak, but on the Daiyu Peak is an old Buddha who emits dazzling shafts of light reaching even to this distance. Nonetheless, he is a lotus blooming in mid-winter."

Upon hearing of Sozan's words, Rasan said: "By my speaking thus, the tail hairs of the tortoise have suddenly grown several feet longer."

VI.

Stephen Wright, the American comedian, is thus one of our greatest poets, as he is the funniest person among us. Following in an example of Stephen Wright's work, which fits the bill to a tee, but with which there is a problem:

. . . Got a friend named Gary whose parents are both midgets. . .

. . . But he's not a midget. . .

. . . He's a midget dwarf. . .

. . . He's about this tall. . .

(Wright indicates about four inches with his hand.)

. . . He's the guy who poses for trophies. . .

Now, the problem with Stephen Wright's prose poetry is, of course, that it cannot be written in a book, and modern people who read prose poetry don't have time to listen to things. But lets not dwell on this here.

VII.

Finally we must take a look at the quintessential prose poet, a Renaissance man in the true sense of the word, a man who wrote funny, Zen-like prose poems which outdo anything since, a man who was as concerned with the preservation and glorification of his culture as we are with the bloody annihilation of our own, doubtless one of the great poets of the past several centuries (though he hasn't gotten nearly the attention he deserves), Max Jacob:

LITTLE POEM

I remember my childhood room. The muslin curtains on the windows were worked over with lace patternings, like scribblings. I made great efforts to find the alphabet there and when I focussed on the letters, I transformed them into imaginary designs. H, a seated man; B, the bridgearch over a river. There were several chests in that room, their wood faintly carved with flowering blossoms. But what I liked best of all were the tops of two standards I could see behind the curtains, which I always viewed as the heads of two puppets with whom it was absolutely forbidden to play.

There, now can you see what I'm getting at here?

The tone of the prose poem is an obsessive dog that bites one in the inattentive act of repetition compulsion galore.

THE TOWN WITH THE LITTLE CANDLES

Even though you've got miles of shoreline to go before you reach the town lit by the little candles, you stop to gaze out at the dark sea. The sound of the waves lapping on the sand almost makes you want to sit down and cry; to forget the little town, to forget Maria and the child. But your brother will be there and there will be music and pinatas. And besides, you are the Mayor, and you are expected to give a speech.

When the dream dissipates there is only the sound of gulls, and two thugs standing over you with a shotgun to your head. What to do next?

LAREDO/NUEVO LAREDO

The people of this fine country stand in line for hours in this border station. Notice if you will their fine faces, not, to be sure, beautiful faces, but fine faces, faces that say nothing to the outsider but humanity. Ours is a nation that reeks of culture and humanity.

And scattered amongst them as if in a film stand the foreigners, one small group of them in particular catching our eye. Now in this group you can see a tall woman with red hair, three tall dark men, and another redhaired woman wearing a purple dress who looks something like a gypsy. As we move in and listen closely to what they are saying we can hear how they talk about this long line, which appears to stretch all the way around the room. One of the tall men is talking about how the line is a game, like some sort of video game, in which success wins you access to the next level. He is saying that as soon as one realizes that the line is a game which goes round in circles, one has access to the next level; that as soon as one realizes that all the people other than oneself and the small group with which one is attempting to cross this border are actors merely pretending to wait in line, as soon as one gets tired of going round in circles, one will naturally go up the stairs to the second floor where the second level begins. He is saying that this kind of thing goes on and on, that there is a third level, and then a fourth level, and so on, all the way to the top of this fine edifice, which none of us has ever seen.

Another one of the tall men is saying that the people are not actors, but rather are allowing themselves to be herded around like this. According to this man the line does have an end: it ends on that wall over there, that wall into which the people are apparently walking. The people finally come to the end of the line and walk themselves right into the wall, squashing themselves into the wall with apparent effort. They flatten out on the wall through sheer force of will, their bodies and souls becoming only millimeters thick, another layer on the wall. This is why our bureaucratic buildings have such thick walls, the man says.

But notice how neither of these men is right and how they were merely talking thus to amuse themselves and their little group. For it has only been a very reasonable forty-five minutes and both men along with their group are already talking to our officials, getting their papers.

POEM FOR RIMBAUD, II

I would like to get into doll-making. I would like to make dolls of great writers, artists, eccentrics. Especially Rimbaud. I have this image in my head: a lifelike and yet somewhat caricatured Rimbaud doll just over a foot tall. He is made to look exactly as he looks in the Carjat photo. Wavy hair, youthful face, gaze fixed in the distance--the wild-eyed poet in a suit and tie.

The doll's blue eyes are of the brightest watery blue. He is wearing a black suit, a white shirt and a small maroon bowtie like the one in the photo--the old-fashioned ties that tie like the bow on a Christmas gift. He sits at a little black piano and plays mechanically while his head spins round in circles. He does absurd little vaudeville dances with a cane and top hat, his bum sticking out buffoonishly. When one pulls the string tucked neatly under the back of his coat, he says, "J'ai soif," in a muffled, crackly, three-year-old's voice. The body and head are carved with precise detail out of wood and are exquisitely painted. There are several plates one can remove to see his inner workings: under a plate on the left side of the cranium one will find a funny little computer chip soldered in at a forty-five degree angle to the ground; the left breastplate comes off, revealing a small, plastic red heart shaped like a Valentine heart and mounted in a whitish waxy substance similar to paraffin; and under the right calf one finds a silver pneumatic device having the exact appearance of a miniature shock-absorber.

I haven't any ideas for the other dolls yet.

IN THE GARDEN (TRUE FLESH)

Eve was a nice plump redhead with pale skin and bright green eyes. She had the thick cheekbones of a Norwegian. She stood on a well-lighted stage with painted jungle scenes in the background and potted tropical plants all around. There was a granite fountain in the corner representing a waterfall. In one bite she devoured half of the golden delicious apple, winking into the camera as she did. The cameramen were astonished: though Eve hadn't put on her makeup yet, there were already lipstick smears on the apple's other half.

JENNY

Jenny was a two-bit whore, but we loved her dearly.

Jenny's hair was pure gold (though Midas wasn't her hairdresser).

Jenny could make carrots talk (though Hoffmann wasn't her executor).

Jenny's red lips were like the lips I imagined round my member on prom night--alas! the lips of another's date--(though she knew not bright red lipstick).

Jenny's hands wrapped around my tool like vines round a thorny bush.

Jenny's feet were fleet like Mercury's, and her messages more obtuse.

Jenny's wings were nothing, though her shoulderblades were smooth.

Jenny roused in me a passion for horrible destructions and for calm, by turns.

Jenny's mouth was a horrible halitosis and a rose.

Jenny bled monthly, with the moon, and the moon changed monthly, with her bleeding.

Jenny was a bitch at times, those times bleeding!

Jenny would be laid up, and couldn't go anywhere, thanks to her bleeding.

We'd get her some over-the-counter barbiturates--which is to say Not enough to do the job.

Jenny played a horrible clown at the dinner table, masturbating herself with a Coke bottle in front of friends while she muttered out supposed obscenities in her fake Italian (we used to get drunk on red wine and eat French bread and risk our lives in ridiculous orgies on couches that didn't at all behoove the grandeur of the scene!).

Jenny was afraid when she was a child--when she was a child indeed!--that she would stand up in church and scream Fuck! at the top of her lungs. (What kind of God could be toppled by a simple thing like Fuck! ?).

Jenny tasted her own shit once and told us that it tasted kind of bad after all (and she had indeed an educated palate).

Jenny was curious about death and what it felt like to get a hard-on.

Jenny made love to women, and once even a donkey, though she washed him off first (silly boys said "Poor donkey," though they really thought "Lucky").

Jenny tasted the horrible light of politics and reason and she said it tasted horrible after all (and she said it was a Sickness).

Jenny threw me down the stairs once, and then she cried and said she was sorry.

When Jenny broke wind it never made a noise, though it wasn't, she insisted, at all for decency's sake, but rather, as she said, to break wind and make a noise was also to make the asshole smudgy and uncomfortable. Jenny had a Cuban girl she loved to fuck special ("You should hear her talk in Spanish as we do it!"). I did, but having studied Spanish in university I didn't understand it as well as Jenny did, whose Spanish came from Mexico.

Jenny could pull off card tricks and clothes faster than you sometimes wanted her to (but that was when you hadn't caught on yet).

Jenny mouthed the words of prophets in her dreams and in her worst moments (like the rest of us do).

Jenny was kind to old women with spirit and made glue out of sour old ladies (and later she'd lick the envelopes without a thought to where it came from, or maybe that was her smile!).

Jenny lit the rag in the gastank of a big parked car one night. (We laughed, and then it blew up and we ran like hell.)

Jenny adorns herself in the finest of rigoleries and dines at the finest restaurants and can put on manners which would lull the richest of dames into a comfortable boredom.

Jenny and I have invented a Piglatin that would baffle a Harvard linguist for a week.

Jenny has a numerology all her own (and she would spout it to the ghost of Pythagoras himself!).

Jenny is like a bull who drags her ruined china shop on the end of a leash (though she is gentle enough to pick the tiniest of green bugs off her smooth legs without damaging them when their beauty--their red eyes!--successfully pleads their case).

Jenny is a wild hermaphrodite! with a feminine sexuality enough to fog stained-glass windows and a masculine sexuality that could tackle the cows of Helios in fast succession!

Jenny's hips walk the street with a heavy sway, her snatch like whitewater roaring through a crevasse (jungle foliage, steady roar!).

Jenny fucks like a goddess like a dirty locomotive.

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