By the brick wall & the HVAC unit, one
cottony puff of dandelion & one head
of yellow. It's winter on the coast, but we're all
feeling out of season. After months of grief
& sickness, isn't it tempting again to read
nature for good omens? It's OK we're still
creatures of desire. Each tuft looks attached
to a parachute, conveying not just dispersal
but escape, though the weedy flower's
ringed with leaves like lion's teeth.
In hac spe vivo
Up betimes, and by water with W. Hewer to White Hall, and there to Mr. Wren, who gives me but small hopes of the favour I hoped for Mr. Steventon, Will’s uncle, of having leave, being upon the point of death, to surrender his place, which do trouble me, but I will do what I can. So back again to the Office, Sir Jer. Smith with me; who is a silly, prating, talking man; but he tells me what he hears, that Holmes and Spragg now rule all with the Duke of Buckingham, as to seabusiness, and will be great men: but he do prophesy what will be the fruit of it; so I do. So to the Office, where we sat all the morning; and at noon home to dinner, and then abroad again, with my wife, to the Duke of York’s playhouse, and saw “The Unfortunate Lovers;” a mean play, I think, but some parts very good, and excellently acted. We sat under the boxes, and saw the fine ladies; among others, my Lady Kerneguy, who is most devilishly painted. And so home, it being mighty pleasure to go alone with my poor wife, in a coach of our own, to a play, and makes us appear mighty great, I think, in the world; at least, greater than ever I could, or my friends for me, have once expected; or, I think, than ever any of my family ever yet lived, in my memory, but my cozen Pepys in Salisbury Court. So to the office, and thence home to supper and to bed.
the wren gives me
small hopes
but I can hear the sea
a prophesy of love
some parts very good
others devilish
and me alone
with the world
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 3 December 1668.
One or the Other
It's true, I suppose: one could grow too fond of one's sorrows. Trouble is, all my life there's always been someone reminding me about the coin with two faces, the violent wind that sweeps everything out of your house so the good can enter to take up residence. Supposedly, there's no way we could know joy without its sulking sister, without its melancholic brother, its malcontent stepmother. And certain toxic plants have common lookalikes— poison instead of water hemlock; pods of the castor bean, cracked seeds from the red rosary pea. Some herbs are tender and good to eat. Others itch your throat with fuzz or leave their bitter flavor in your mouth— the seal of a kiss that subtly changes what faith you had in a world benevolent and wildly sweet all the way through, so it whets your taste for more.
Foundlings
Up, and at the office all the morning upon some accounts of Sir D. Gawden, and at noon abroad with W. Hewer, thinking to have found Mr. Wren at Captain Cox’s, to have spoke something to him about doing a favour for Will’s uncle Steventon, but missed him. And so back home and abroad with my wife, the first time that ever I rode in my own coach, which do make my heart rejoice, and praise God, and pray him to bless it to me and continue it. So she and I to the King’s playhouse, and there sat to avoid seeing Knepp in a box above where Mrs. Williams happened to be, and there saw “The Usurper;” a pretty good play, in all but what is designed to resemble Cromwell and Hugh Peters, which is mighty silly. The play done, we to White Hall; where my wife staid while I up to the Duchesse’s and Queen’s side, to speak with the Duke of York: and here saw all the ladies, and heard the silly discourse of the King, with his people about him, telling a story of my Lord Rochester’s having of his clothes stole, while he was with a wench; and his gold all gone, but his clothes found afterwards stuffed into a feather bed by the wench that stole them. I spoke with the Duke of York, just as he was set down to supper with the King, about our sending of victuals to Sir Thomas Allen’s fleet hence to Cales to meet him. And so back to my wife in my coach, and so with great content and joy home, where I made my boy to make an end of the Reall Character, which I begun a great while ago, and do please me infinitely, and indeed is a most worthy labour, and I think mighty easy, though my eyes make me unable to attempt any thing in it.
To-day I hear that Mr. Ackworth’s cause went for him at Guildhall, against his accusers, which I am well enough pleased with.
found my heart
in a box with all
my old clothes
found a feather
at the end of
an infinite day
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Wednesday 2 December 1668.
Cinéma Vérité
When scaffolds collapsed and wet columns cracked in the hastily built palace of cinema by the bay, it's said the dictator's wife clapped her hands and ordered more concrete poured, rather than lose time extricating the half- buried bodies of workers. A nightmarish kind of continuous, unscripted action and unrepeatable dialogue: reel, as in cylinder on which film or wire loops into itself until the sprockets break. Or sway, teetering from shock— for instance, from an amputated limb. Where fingers and toes poked out of the hardened mortar: more frosting layers. When the sun drops fiery velvet drapes across the water, newspaper boys and peanut vendors pedaling past swear they can hear diegetic sounds issuing from that story-world: moans and weeping with no faces, eyes.
Quick, dead
Up, and to the office, where sat all the morning, and at noon with my people to dinner, and so to the office, very busy till night, and then home and made my boy read to me Wilkins’s Reall Character, which do please me mightily, and so after supper to bed with great pleasure and content with my wife. This day I hear of poor Mr. Clerke, the solicitor, being dead, of a cold, after being not above two days ill, which troubles me mightily, poor man!
all the morning people
busy and mad
and I content
with being dead
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Tuesday 1 December 1668.
Nostalgia Marketing
Under the category of childhood snacks, you can choose: puffed corn nuts, jicama slices with chili salt, green mangos with shrimp paste. Vacuum-sealed, they come from a factory warehouse or similar node of distribution after the process of gathering viable consumables from their source. What price is appetite, what impossible gleam from the past? Corporations would sell you even the hole you could fill with blood and sugar and bile. Nothing's too much for what you've already lost.
Unhoused
Up betimes, and with W. Hewer, who is my guard, to White Hall, to a Committee of Tangier, where the business of Mr. Lanyon took up all the morning; and where, poor man! he did manage his business with so much folly, and ill fortune to boot, that the Board, before his coming in, inclining, of their own accord, to lay his cause aside, and leave it to the law, but he pressed that we would hear it, and it ended to the making him appear a very knave, as well as it did to me a fool also, which I was sorry for. Thence by water, Mr. Povy, Creed, and I, to Arundell House, and there I did see them choosing their Council, it being St. Andrew’s-day; and I had his Cross set on my hat, as the rest had, and cost me 2s., and so leaving them I away by coach home to dinner, and my wife, after dinner, went the first time abroad to take the maidenhead of her coach, calling on Roger Pepys, and visiting Mrs. Creed, and my cozen Turner, while I at home all the afternoon and evening, very busy and doing much work, to my great content. Home at night, and there comes Mrs. Turner and Betty to see us, and supped with us, and I shewed them a cold civility for fear of troubling my wife, and after supper, they being gone, we to bed.
Thus ended this month, with very good content, that hath been the most sad to my heart and the most expenseful to my purse on things of pleasure, having furnished my wife’s closet and the best chamber, and a coach and horses, that ever I yet knew in the world: and do put me into the greatest condition of outward state that ever I was in, or hoped ever to be, or desired: and this at a time when we do daily expect great changes in this Office: and by all reports we must, all of us, turn out. But my eyes are come to that condition that I am not able to work: and therefore that, and my wife’s desire, make me have no manner of trouble in my thoughts about it. So God do his will in it!
poor man
I press his cross
to my head
on a cold month
in a furnished closet
and the best world
to ward off
all eyes
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 30 November 1668.
Reasons to Disrupt the Narrative
Parables, fables - stories that tell in order to get to a billboard at the end of the road, where a catchy slogan is painted in neon yellow or bright flamingo orange. The letters are as long- legged as wading birds, as familiar as fork or spoon or cup. As night falls, no one says crepuscular or eventide. As the orphaned child sobs under the mother tree, no one blames patriarchy. The crone isn't wise, only bitter. The young are either desperate or lost. The last page delivers a verdict reputed to be the will of the gods.
Unmoored
(Lord’s day). Lay long in bed with pleasure with my wife, with whom I have now a great deal of content, and my mind is in other things also mightily more at ease, and I do mind my business better than ever and am more at peace, and trust in God I shall ever be so, though I cannot yet get my mind off from thinking now and then of Deb., but I do ever since my promise a while since to my wife pray to God by myself in my chamber every night, and will endeavour to get my wife to do the like with me ere long, but am in much fear of what she lately frighted me with about her being a Catholique; and I dare not, therefore, move her to go to church, for fear she should deny me; but this morning, of her own accord, she spoke of going to church the next Sunday, which pleases me mightily. This morning my coachman’s clothes come home; and I like the livery mightily, and so I all the morning at my chamber, and dined with my wife, and got her to read to me in the afternoon, till Sir W. Warren, by appointment, comes to me, who spent two hours, or three, with me, about his accounts of Gottenburgh, which are so confounded, that I doubt they will hardly ever pass without my doing something, which he desires of me, and which, partly from fear, and partly from unwillingness to wrong the King, and partly from its being of no profit to me, I am backward to give way to, though the poor man do indeed deserve to be rid of this trouble, that he hath lain so long under, from the negligence of this Board. We afterwards fell to other talk, and he tells me, as soon as he saw my coach yesterday, he wished that the owner might not contract envy by it; but I told him it was now manifestly for my profit to keep a coach, and that, after employments like mine for eight years, it were hard if I could not be justly thought to be able to do that.
He gone, my wife and I to supper; and so she to read, and made an end of the Life of Archbishop Laud, which is worth reading, as informing a man plainly in the posture of the Church, and how the things of it were managed with the same self-interest and design that every other thing is, and have succeeded accordingly. So to bed.
whoever I shall be
I cannot pray to myself
and I fear the sun
hours pass without me
years just end
plain and thin
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 29 November 1668.