Someone was running at night
and someone was being picked up.
The dunes glowed in the distance,
from one end of the world to the other,
like a border. We knew there were others
on the other side. We could hear
their chants, see the smudge-lines
of smoke from their fires. Every step
filled our shoes with sand. We were always
trying to run toward each other. The air
smelled of sulfur and the granular residues
suspended in the air after cities had burned
into ghosts. Why did we even want to look
for signs of stars and planets gone
into hiding in the dark?
Apocalypso
[Late Latin apocalypsis, from Greek apokalupsis, revelation; apocalypse, from apokaluptein, to uncover : apo-, apo- + kaluptein, to cover; see kel- in Indo-European roots.]
Draw the heavy velvet drapes open,
see the moon’s pockmarked marble
darkly floating in the sky: perigee-
syzygy, disco ball rising on invisible
pulleys up the dome of this all-night
discotheque where we’ve come to dance
while looking furtively over one
twitchy shoulder every five minutes…
And we don’t know, we don’t know,
despite the floodlights spilling
on our heads, just how the next act
plays out. Lift the veil, a voice
cries out. But we’re too mired in
the music; and it’s almost better
just to close our eyes and press
deeper into our partners’ arms.
D.T.
Up and to my office, busy all the morning with Commissioner Pett; at noon I to the Exchange, and meeting Shales, he and I to the Coffee-house and there talked of our victualling matters, which I fear will come to little. However I will go on and carry it as far as I can.
So home to dinner where I expected Commissioner Pett, and had a good dinner, but he came not. After dinner came my perriwigg-maker, and brings me a second periwigg, made of my own haire, which comes to 21s. 6d. more than the worth of my own haire, so that they both come to 4l. 1s. 6d., which he sayth will serve me two years, but I fear it.
He being gone, I to my office, and put on my new shagg purple gowne, with gold buttons and loop lace, I being a little fearful of taking cold and of pain coming upon me. Here I staid making an end of a troublesome letter, but to my advantage, against Sir W. Batten, giving Sir G. Carteret an account of our late great contract with Sir W. Warren for masts, wherein I am sure I did the King 600l. service.
That done home to my wife to take a clyster, which I did, and it wrought very well and brought a great deal of wind, which I perceive is all that do trouble me. After that, about 9 or 10 o’clock, to supper in my wife’s chamber, and then about 12 to bed.
fear me
I will go as far as I can
I am more than my hair
that gold cold wind
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 13 November 1663.
Allegory for ___
The dentist’s assistant explains
to the trainee that I have a small
mouth. Together, they maneuver
the plastic-sheathed wand tipped
with a circle into my open mouth.
This works like a crosshair—
They fire a short X-ray burst through it,
talking as they work. I am of course
awake. There is sensation in my jaw;
I feel the pull from the retractor.
& Of course it’s hard to talk or answer
back, above the buzz of instruments.
Graveyard shift
Lay long in bed, indeed too long, divers people and the officers staying for me. My cozen Thomas Pepys the executor being below, and I went to him and stated reckonings about our debt, for his payments of money to my uncle Thomas heretofore by the Captain’s orders. I did not pay him but will soon do it if I can.
To the office and there all the morning, where Sir W. Pen, like a coxcomb, was so ready to cross me in a motion I made unawares for the entering a man at Chatham into the works, wherein I was vexed to see his spleene, but glad to understand it, and that it was in no greater a matter, I being not at all concerned here.
To the ‘Change and did several businesses there and so home with Mr. Moore to dinner, my wife having dined, with Mr. Hollyard with her to-day, he being come to advise her about her hollow sore place.
After dinner Mr. Moore and I discoursing of my Lord’s negligence in attendance at Court, and the discourse the world makes of it, with the too great reason that I believe there is for it; I resolved and took coach to his lodgings, thinking to speak with my Lord about it without more ado. Here I met Mr. Howe, and he and I largely about it, and he very soberly acquainted me how things are with my Lord, that my Lord do not do anything like himself, but follows his folly, and spends his time either at cards at Court with the ladies, when he is there at all, or else at Chelsy with the slut to his great disgrace, and indeed I do see and believe that my Lord do apprehend that he do grow less too at Court.
Anon my Lord do come in, and I begun to fall in discourse with him, but my heart did misgive me that my Lord would not take it well, and then found him not in a humour to talk, and so after a few ordinary words, my Lord not talking in the manner as he uses to do; I took leave, and spent some time with W. Howe again, and told him how I could not do what I had so great a mind and resolution to do, but that I thought it would be as well to do it in writing, which he approves of, and so I took leave of him, and by coach home, my mind being full of it, and in pain concerning it. So to my office busy very late, the nights running on faster than one thinks, and so to supper and to bed.
we pay for the morning
in unaware work
day is a hollow dance
the world makes
my heart give me
a few ordinary words
but do it in writing
the nights run faster than ink
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 12 November 1663.
After the campaign
Up and to my office all the morning, and at noon to the Coffee-house, where with Dr. Allen some good discourse about physique and chymistry. And among other things, I telling him what Dribble the German Doctor do offer of an instrument to sink ships; he tells me that which is more strange, that something made of gold, which they call in chymistry Aurum fulminans, a grain, I think he said, of it put into a silver spoon and fired, will give a blow like a musquett, and strike a hole through the spoon downward, without the least force upward; and this he can make a cheaper experiment of, he says, with iron prepared.
Thence to the ‘Change, and being put off a meeting with T. Trice, he not coming, I home to dinner, and after dinner by coach with my wife to my periwigg maker’s for my second periwigg, but it is not done, and so, calling at a place or two, home, and there to my office, and there taught my wife a new lesson in arithmetique and so sent her home, and I to several businesses; and so home to supper and to bed, being mightily troubled with a cold in my stomach and head, with a great pain by coughing.
O to sink into a silver spoon
give a blow like a musket
or make a cheap experiment with change
I put off a meeting
for less trouble in my stomach
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Wednesday 11 November 1663.
Émigré
Up and to the office, where we sat till noon, and then to the Exchange, where spoke with several and had my head casting about how to get a penny and I hope I shall, and then home, and there Mr. Moore by appointment dined with me, and after dinner all the afternoon till night drawing a bond and release against to-morrow for T. Trice, and I to come to a conclusion in which I proceed with great fear and jealousy, knowing him to be a rogue and one that I fear has at this time got too great a hank over me by the neglect of my lawyers.
But among other things I am come to an end with Mr. Moore for a 32l., a good while lying in my hand of my Lord Privy Seal’s which he for the odd 7l. do give me a bond to secure me against, and so I got 25l. clear.
Then, he being gone, to the office and there late setting down yesterday’s remarkable discourses, and so home and to supper, late, and to bed.
The Queene, I hear, is now very well again, and that she hath bespoke herself a new gowne.
I exchange my head for a lawyer
the sea for a cure
and I clear off
yesterday I hear is now very new
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Tuesday 10 November 1663.
Lyrics in the aftermath
The eyes are the first thing to go,
melting back into the head…
W-a-t-e-r, said the teacher
to the child, tracing the word
on her palms while holding
them under the pump.
What could we show
our grandchildren
of a world that once
held some forms
of decency?
We grow so comfortable within our walls
we no longer believe we’re in prison.
Time does not take
all things away.
Weeds colonize
the garden.
Ivy, unchecked,
grows rampant
up pillars.
How would you feel
if you came home
to your dorm room
to find your roommate
had built a border
of clothes hangers
between your side
of the room
and hers?
Evil is such a growth area.
Why would I not see, hear or speak it?
My (brown) friend, slight of build
and kind of face, wrote today
that as he got off his train
stop in San Francisco, a (white)
man stepped directly in his path,
sneered, and did a mock salute.
Before coming to America, my friend
was a cardiologist and film critic.
Here, for many years, he has worked
for the homeless as a social worker.
He lives in a tiny apartment.
Many years ago he made me a meal
of noodles in a small dented pot.
Whatever wings I once dreamt I had
have dwindled…
I wear my heart
on my sleeve.
All day I weep
intermittently.
I also wonder how
the tomato plant
on my deck
has pushed out
three new fruit
in the cold,
this late
in the year.
Where I live, you can’t see the horizon, but the harsh
croaks of ravens echo wonderfully.
What gives me
insomnia: stumbling
on the story of the blind
Bulgarian mystic Baba Vanga
and her predictions
for this year
and afterwards.
North and south
divided again;
The Shadow abroad,
bent on redrawing
the map of the world.
The first black
president as the last
president. By 2130,
civilizations
living under water,
with the help of aliens.
There are words no one has a word for
and things no one has a thing for yet.
It is hard to sleep
for thinking of such
a future, a place
where I might still
want to live,
even given that
it doesn’t
yet exist.
In response to Via Negativa: The eyes are the first to go....
Demons and the Company They Keep
Not accepting, not rejecting
says the Buddha as the demons
elect to live with him
Hospitality for demons by Luisa A. Igloria
I think of the demons
that have kept us company
through the ages.
Now we have medications
that quiet the howling
of some of these demons.
But still some ask for stories
and a glass of milk.
Some make stronger demands,
and we struggle to deliver.
On the morning after the election
the seething wind finally silenced,
I startle from sleep, mistaking
the cat’s crying
for a larger weeping.
I listen for the call of the ancient
prophet or the modern Romero,
and hear the rustle in the palm trees.
The eyes are the first thing to go: more Instagram epigrams
I’ve taken to walking all the way down and back up the mile-and-a-half-long Plummer’s Hollow Road every day now, and what’s curious is that, despite having walked this road many thousands of times in my life, I still notice two or three new things every time. You can see a lot just by looking, as Yogi Berra supposedly said. Of course, most of what I see are trees. And many observations don’t make good photos — but a few do. And by the time I get back to the house, sometimes I’ve thought up a caption as well.
