Coming home from the doctor's with a new prescription for migraine— After I take it, it's hard to tell if the sleepy exhaustion that descends is a side effect. She'd asked: what's keeping you awake, what's keeping you stressed? Let's just say it's been a long time since a day simply stretched, a clean cotton sheet; mild ripples. I pack ice cubes into a flask before filling it with water. I'm always being reminded to hydrate, even through the suffering. My tongue flicks over the edges of my teeth, feels the gaps marking previous extractions. I can't think of the word maw without thinking of a portal to some layered underworld. Relatives and other people I don't even know huddle in every corner, keeping a running tally of my transgressions. Someone has turned up the heat, and I'm struggling with the zipper of a parka. If I knew how to be a fish or a bird, I'd want nothing but blue.
March
on a balmy first of March
the trees’ shadows barely rustle
in the ridgetop breeze
an odor of burning plastic
which might or might not have come
all the way from East Palestine
a propeller plane circles
no clouds to hide in
i sit surrounded by the uprooted
their dwindling bulks
like old axles each with just
one decaying wheel
misaligned a freight train
shrieks around the mountain
spine beginning to twinge
i walk on
Some (more) facts about paradise
It’s always such a gift and an honor when my artist friends make adaptations of my work. Marc Neys surprised me with this yesterday: a complete and I think effective re-imagining of the original poem. You know, what any attentive reader does. But most readers aren’t crazy-brilliant Belgian artist-composers.
Trumpeter swan
This morning I went early to my Lord at Mr. Crew’s, where I spoke to him. Here were a great many come to see him, as Secretary Thurlow who is now by this Parliament chosen again Secretary of State. There were also General Monk’s trumpeters to give my Lord a sound of their trumpets this morning. Thence I went to my office, and wrote a letter to Mr. Downing about the business of his house. Then going home, I met with Mr. Eglin, Chetwind, and Thomas, who took me to the Leg in King’s street, where we had two brave dishes of meat, one of fish, a carp and some other fishes, as well done as ever I ate any. After that to the Swan tavern, where we drank a quart or two of wine, and so parted. So I to Mrs. Jem and took Mr. Moore with me (who I met in the street), and there I met W. Howe and Sheply. After that to Westminster Hall, where I saw Sir G. Booth at liberty. This day I hear the City militia is put into good posture, and it is thought that Monk will not be able to do any great matter against them now, if he have a mind.
I understand that my Lord Lambert did yesterday send a letter to the Council, and that to-night he is to come and appear to the Council in person. Sir Arthur Haselrigge do not yet appear in the House. Great is the talk of a single person, and that it would now be Charles, George, or Richard again. For the last of which, my Lord St. John is said to speak high. Great also is the dispute now in the House, in whose name the writs shall run for the next Parliament; and it is said that Mr. Prin, in open House, said, “In King Charles’s.”
From Westminster Hall home. Spent the evening in my study, and so after some talk with my wife, then to bed.
a trumpeter to trump the wind
one swan
high in that open house
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 2 March 1659/60.
Triboluminescence
There's always a trick someone will call science. A loaf of banana bread at the school fair = Chemistry. Each fall, students at the university climb the stairs to the roof and drop pumpkins from there. It's hard to tell who does the measurements, who keeps time. Everyone leaning out of a window or walking past can hear the splat on cement, see the festive orange guts that fleck the grass border. No one was harmed in the experiment involving a feather and a cannonball. There are times I'm convinced quantum physics will make it possible for me to be everywhere. If a smashed sugar cube can give off sparks of light thaf fly like fish scales, why should I not harbor the same ambition?
Detached
In the morning went to my Lord’s lodgings, thinking to have spoke with Mr. Sheply, having not been to visit him since my coming to town. But he being not within I went up, and out of the box where my Lord’s pamphlets lay, I chose as many as I had a mind to have for my own use and left the rest. Then to my office, where little to do, abut Mr. Sheply comes to me, so at dinner time he and I went to Mr. Crew’s, whither Mr. Thomas was newly come to town, being sent with Sir H. Yelverton, my old school-fellow at Paul’s School, to bring the thanks of the county to General Monk for the return of the Parliament. But old Mr. Crew and my Lord not coming home to dinner, we tarried late before we went to dinner, it being the day that John, Mr. John Crew’s coachman, was to be buried in the afternoon, he being a day or two before killed with a blow of one of his horses that struck his skull into his brain. From thence Mr. Sheply and I went into London to Mr. Laxton’s; my Lord’s apothecary, and so by water to Westminster, where at the Sun he and I spent two or three hours in a pint or two of wine, discoursing of matters in the country, among other things telling me that my uncle did to him make a very kind mention of me, and what he would do for me. Thence I went home, and went to bed betimes.
This day the Parliament did vote that they would not sit longer than the 15th day of this month.
thinking
out of the box
an unburied skull
the sun spent hours
in a pint of wine
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 1 March 1659/60.
Prophesy 101
To my office, and drank at Will’s with Mr. Moore, who told me how my Lord is chosen General at Sea by the Council, and that it is thought that Monk will be joined with him therein.
Home and dined, after dinner my wife and I by water to London, and thence to Herring’s, the merchant in Coleman Street, about 50l. which he promises I shall have on Saturday next. So to my mother’s, and then to Mrs. Turner’s, of whom I took leave, and her company, because she was to go out of town to-morrow with Mr. Pepys into Norfolk. Here my cosen Norton gave me a brave cup of metheglin, the first I ever drank. To my mother’s and supped there.
off to sea will be
here
water in the street
is next
turn out to row
in a brave cup
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Wednesday 29 February 1659/60.
Childhood: A Zuihitsu
A snippet of hair and a brittle toenail moon The orange rubber bath toy christened "Mr. D" A little writing table with a hinged lid, its recessed drawer holding comic books and lined paper, plastic tubes of paste A long pillow against which three daughters could lean, each holding a picture book in the morning A red, zippered sweatshirt hoodie that looked reddest against a canvas of green grass at the park The store on the second floor of Mar-Bay selling clothes from Taiwan and Hello Kitty marshmallows Every goat ever tied to the guava tree in the backyard, bleating before the knife and the fire and the feast A wooden ruler and pencil on the piano keyboard waiting for fingers toflayflog The bit of torn newspaper her mother used to cover an evil-looking face in the background of the family picture Missals and rosary beads, shale-colored lace veils The women's collective screaming when the child walked in from the garden with a gash on her forehead The roasted pig's gummy tongue, the chicken's rubbery heart, its sandy liver A stoppered amber vial in the alcove with something fleshy swimming in liquid The doorframe, one side still bearing pencil marks recording height and growth