Blackbird

Up pretty betimes, and shall, I hope, come to myself and business again, after a small playing the truant, for I find that my interest and profit do grow daily, for which God be praised and keep me to my duty.
To my office, and anon one tells me that Rundall, the house-carpenter of Deptford, hath sent me a fine blackbird, which I went to see. He tells me he was offered 20s. for him as he came along, he do so whistle.
So to my office, and busy all the morning, among other things, learning to understand the course of the tides, and I think I do now do it.
At noon Mr. Creed comes to me, and he and I to the Exchange, where I had much discourse with several merchants, and so home with him to dinner, and then by water to Greenwich, and calling at the little alehouse at the end of the town to wrap a rag about my little left toe, being new sore with walking, we walked pleasantly to Woolwich, in our way hearing the nightingales sing. So to Woolwich yard, and after doing many things there, among others preparing myself for a dispute against Sir W. Pen in the business of Bowyer’s, wherein he is guilty of some corruption to the King’s wrong, we walked back again without drinking, which I never do because I would not make my coming troublesome to any, nor would become obliged too much to any. In our going back we were overtook by Mr. Steventon, a purser, and uncle to my clerk Will, who told me how he was abused in the passing of his accounts by Sir J. Minnes to the degree that I am ashamed to hear it, and resolve to retrieve the matter if I can though the poor man has given it over. And however am pleased enough to see that others do see his folly and dotage as well as myself, though I believe in my mind the man in general means well.
Took boat at Greenwich and to Deptford, where I did the same thing, and found Davis, the storekeeper, a knave, and shuffling in the business of Bewpers, being of the party with Young and Whistler to abuse the King, but I hope I shall be even with them. So walked to Redriffe, drinking at the Half-way house, and so walked and by water to White Hall, all our way by water coming and going reading a little book said to be writ by a person of Quality concerning English gentry to be preferred before titular honours, but the most silly nonsense, no sense nor grammar, yet in as good words that ever I saw in all my life, but from beginning to end you met not with one entire and regular sentence.
At White Hall Sir G. Carteret was out of the way, and so returned back presently, and home by water and to bed.

the carpenter sent me a blackbird
to whistle in the house
so pleasant to hear

nightingales sing out back
and I hear the poor thing shuffling
to riff on a life sentence


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 22 May 1663.

Garden

Whipstitch, running stitch, feather,
chain; and leaves of the apple tree

that we filled in with close-lipped
satin. See the mercerized gloss,

the crimson lifting the fruit away
from the weave, an outline to make it

more beckoning— Within the hoop
that cinched the frame, a space

for working out the eternal
questions: what name do you give

the broad leaf that becomes your bed?
how many knots will signify desire?

Don’t pull the snarls apart, only tug
at them gently. After the fruit’s

been plucked and eaten, after the birds
have flown away, the sky’s blue canvas

does not fall to pieces at your feet.
The only hedge that needs repair

is the one that rings the sundial.
The difference between before

and after is that now, time ticks
louder. Ivy runs rampant underfoot;

thistle, groundsel, chokeweed. So much
you wish sometimes you didn’t know.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Sweet nothing.

Sweet nothing

Up, but cannot get up so early as I was wont, nor my mind to business as it should be and used to be before this dancing. However, to my office, where most of the morning talking of Captain Cox of Chatham about his and the whole yard’s difference against Mr. Barrow the storekeeper, wherein I told him my mind clearly, that he would be upheld against the design of any to ruin him, he being we all believed, but Sir W. Batten his mortal enemy, as good a servant as any the King has in the yard.
After much good advice and other talk I home and danced with Pembleton, and then the barber trimmed me, and so to dinner, my wife and I having high words about her dancing to that degree that I did enter and make a vow to myself not to oppose her or say anything to dispraise or correct her therein as long as her month lasts, in pain of 2s. 6d. for every time, which, if God pleases, I will observe, for this roguish business has brought us more disquiett than anything has happened a great while.
After dinner to my office, where late, and then home; and Pembleton being there again, we fell to dance a country dance or two, and so to supper and bed. But being at supper my wife did say something that caused me to oppose her in, she used the word devil, which vexed me, and among other things I said I would not have her to use that word, upon which she took me up most scornfully, which, before Ashwell and the rest of the world, I know not now-a-days how to check, as I would heretofore, for less than that would have made me strike her. So that I fear without great discretion I shall go near to lose too my command over her, and nothing do it more than giving her this occasion of dancing and other pleasures, whereby her mind is taken up from her business and finds other sweets besides pleasing of me, and so makes her that she begins not at all to take pleasure in me or study to please me as heretofore. But if this month of her dancing were but out (as my first was this night, and I paid off Pembleton for myself) I shall hope with a little pains to bring her to her old wont. This day Susan that lived with me lately being out of service, and I doubt a simple wench, my wife do take her for a little time to try her at least till she goes into the country, which I am yet doubtful whether it will be best for me to send her or no, for fear of her running off in her liberty before I have brought her to her right temper again.

this morning is a clear ruin
a mortal barb

words make anything
to raise disquiet

but the word devil
that word full of world

is a nothing as sweet
as my first little doubt


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 21 May 1663, written while listening to Myrkur’s album
M.

Way station

In some games it’s all downhill:
momentum gained from the speed of
careening closer to the ravine.

Wind is an accessory, whipping
your scarf into an aerodynamic
arrow; or, the lift you ride

to sail across the chasm. Rocks
litter the craggy landscape. Silver birch
and fir, the only things that gesture

upward. You can’t remember how many nights
or days or cycles you’ve picked yourself up
from countless falls. The moon’s a pendant,

festooned on the lower registers.
Its glow is soft, like kindness; like a face
you once saw in a window, looking as you passed.

Tarantism

Up and to my office, and anon home and to see my wife dancing with Pembleton about noon, and I to the Trinity House to dinner and after dinner home, and there met Pembleton, who I perceive has dined with my wife, which she takes no notice of, but whether that proceeds out of design, or fear to displease me I know not, but it put me into a great disorder again, that I could mind nothing but vexing, but however I continued my resolution of going down by water to Woolwich, took my wife and Ashwell; and going out met Mr. Howe come to see me, whose horse we caused to be set up, and took him with us. The tide against us, so I went ashore at Greenwich before, and did my business at the yard about putting things in order as to their proceeding to build the new yacht ordered to be built by Christopher Pett, and so to Woolwich town, where at an alehouse I found them ready to attend my coming, and so took boat again, it being cold, and I sweating, with my walk, which was very pleasant along the green corne and pease, and most of the way sang, he and I, and eat some cold meat we had, and with great pleasure home, and so he took horse again, and Pembleton coming, we danced a country dance or two and so broke up and to bed, my mind restless and like to be so while she learns to dance. God forgive my folly.

dancing out of fear
is a great disorder

water going out with the tide
green and cold as old meat

we danced and broke
to be less like God


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Wednesday 20 May 1663, and written under the influence of Agorophobic Nosebleed’s album
Arc.

Current events

Last year all they ever asked about
was the boxer with the crumpled face
and his like-a-drag-queen-dressing momma,
until the recent media fiasco and his homophobic
sermon. This year it’s going to be nothing
but the Filipino Trump, the curfew he’s imposed;
that crying scene at his parents’ graves
where he prayed for the light of some divine
or otherworldly guidance, straight
out of a telenovela; the rape jokes, the assassin
squads, the way pictures of dead bodies
have already landed on the front pages
with eyes and hands duct-taped, signs
hung on their bludgeoned torsos saying I
am a drug dealer and a bad example to society

Even now we’re bracing for the rhetoric of pity
and piety, the disputes that have broken out
among strangers as with kith and kin: Whose
side are you on?
But as always the taxicab
of history picks up its passengers, takes them where
they think they want to go; then leaves them there.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Gut.

Gut

Up pretty betimes, but yet I observe how my dancing and lying a morning or two longer than ordinary for my cold do make me hard to rise as I used to do, or look after my business as I am wont.
To my chamber to make an end of my papers to my father to be sent by the post to-night, and taking copies of them, which was a great work, but I did it this morning, and so to my office, and thence with Sir John Minnes to the Tower; and by Mr. Slingsby, and Mr. Howard, Controller of the Mint, we were shown the method of making this new money, from the beginning to the end, which is so pretty that I did take a note of every part of it and set them down by themselves for my remembrance hereafter. That being done it was dinner time, and so the Controller would have us dine with him and his company, the King giving them a dinner every day. And very merry and good discourse about the business we have been upon, and after dinner went to the Assay Office and there saw the manner of assaying of gold and silver, and how silver melted down with gold do part, just being put into aqua-fortis, the silver turning into water, and the gold lying whole in the very form it was put in, mixed of gold and silver, which is a miracle; and to see no silver at all but turned into water, which they can bring again into itself out of the water.
And here I was made thoroughly to understand the business of the fineness and coarseness of metals, and have put down my lessons with my other observations therein.
At table among other discourse they told us of two cheats, the best I ever heard. One, of a labourer discovered to convey away the bits of silver cut out pence by swallowing them down into his belly, and so they could not find him out, though, of course, they searched all the labourers; but, having reason to doubt him, they did, by threats and promises, get him to confess, and did find 7l. of it in his house at one time.
The other of one that got a way of coyning money as good and passable and large as the true money is, and yet saved fifty per cent. to himself, which was by getting moulds made to stamp groats like old groats, which is done so well, and I did beg two of them which I keep for rarities, that there is not better in the world, and is as good, nay, better than those that commonly go, which was the only thing that they could find out to doubt them by, besides the number that the party do go to put off, and then coming to the Comptroller of the Mint, he could not, I say, find out any other thing to raise any doubt upon, but only their being so truly round or near it, though I should never have doubted the thing neither. He was neither hanged nor burned, the cheat was thought so ingenious, and being the first time they could ever trap him in it, and so little hurt to any man in it, the money being as good as commonly goes.
Thence to the office till the evening, we sat, and then by water (taking Pembleton with us), over the water to the Halfway House, where we played at ninepins, and there my damned jealousy took fire, he and my wife being of a side and I seeing of him take her by the hand in play, though I now believe he did [it] only in passing and sport. Thence home and being 10 o’clock was forced to land beyond the Custom House, and so walked home and to my office, and having dispatched my great letters by the post to my father, of which I keep copies to show by me and for my future understanding, I went home to supper and bed, being late.

I observe how ordinary
is this miracle of a laborer

swallowing down into his belly
all threats and promises

like a better world
so truly round
and so little hurt to any man in it


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Tuesday 19 May 1663.

What are you then

with no white name
with no black name

with no mixed blood
obvious enough to claim

with no history
of washing ashore

on a dinghy, or nearly
dying in a jungle war

with no complicated love
with no indigenous face

with no movie star relative
with no time spent working

for a sheikh in the middle east
with no lost years hiding

in basements without papers
with no siblings betrothed

to factory sewing
machines with no comfort

woman for a grandmother
with no deadbeat for

a father or call
girl for a mother

with no pedigree
of either poverty

or wealth with which
to thicken narrative

Lighthouse

“…our passing
is common as ash”
~ D. Bonta

Here at twilight, the smell
of earth after days of rain;
and over that, salt trace

carried over by wind
from the coast.
We climbed

the winding wrought-
iron staircase to look
over the mouth

of the bay. Inside
the tower’s bell-
shaped skirt,

the morning’s heat
another sheath
not yet shed—

Would we have known
where to look, or how
to find the pain budding

even then? The way
some things nest quietly
before they are noticed.

The way fog obscures
the shore, these rocks
that have always been here.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Immortal bird.

Immortal bird

Up and after taking leave of Sir W. Batten, who is gone this day towards Portsmouth (to little purpose, God knows) upon his survey, I home and spent the morning at dancing; at noon Creed dined with us and Mr. Deane of Woolwich, and so after dinner came Mr. Howe, who however had enough for his dinner, and so, having done, by coach to Westminster, she to Mrs. Clerke and I to St. James’s, where the Duke being gone down by water to-day with the King I went thence to my Lord Sandwich’s lodgings, where Mr. Howe and I walked a while, and going towards Whitehall through the garden Dr. Clerk and Creed called me across the bowling green, and so I went thither and after a stay went up to Mrs. Clerke who was dressing herself to go abroad with my wife. But, Lord! in what a poor condition her best chamber is, and things about her, for all the outside and show that she makes, but I found her just such a one as Mrs. Pierce, contrary to my expectation, so much that I am sick and sorry to see it.
Thence for an hour Creed and I walked to White Hall, and into the Park, seeing the Queen and Maids of Honour passing through the house going to the Park. But above all, Mrs. Stuart is a fine woman, and they say now a common mistress to the King, as my Lady Castlemaine is; which is a great pity. Thence taking a coach to Mrs. Clerke’s, took her, and my wife, and Ashwell, and a Frenchman, a kinsman of hers, to the Park, where we saw many fine faces, and one exceeding handsome, in a white dress over her head, with many others very beautiful. Staying there till past eight at night, I carried Mrs. Clerke and her Frenchman, who sings well, home, and thence home ourselves, talking much of what we had observed to-day of the poor household stuff of Mrs. Clerke and mere show and flutter that she makes in the world; and pleasing myself in my own house and manner of living more than ever I did by seeing how much better and more substantially I live than others do.
So to supper and bed.

mouth gone down
towards the owl

she makes us see our passing
is common as ash

fine hands over the night
sing of what we serve

the stuff and flutter of living
more than others


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 18 May 1663, made while listening to the band Immortal Bird.