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Posted on by Dave Bonta

Seeker

This morning I took care to get a vessel to carry my Lord’s things to the Downs on Monday next, and so to White Hall to my Lord, where he and I did look over the Commission drawn for him by the Duke’s Council, which I do not find my Lord displeased with, though short of what Dr. Walker did formerly draw for him.
Thence to the Privy Seal to see how things went there, and I find that Mr. Baron had by a severe warrant from the King got possession of the office from his brother Bickerstaffe, which is very strange, and much to our admiration, it being against all open justice.
Mr. Moore and I and several others being invited to-day by Mr. Goodman, a friend of his, we dined at the Bullhead upon the best venison pasty that ever I eat of in my life, and with one dish more, it was the best dinner I ever was at. Here rose in discourse at table a dispute between Mr. Moore and Dr. Clerke, the former affirming that it was essential to a tragedy to have the argument of it true, which the Doctor denied, and left it to me to be judge, and the cause to be determined next Tuesday morning at the same place, upon the eating of the remains of the pasty, and the loser to spend 10s.
All this afternoon sending express to the fleet, to order things against my Lord’s coming and taking direction of my Lord about some rich furniture to take along with him for the Princess.
And talking of this, I hear by Mr. Townsend, that there is the greatest preparation against the Prince de Ligne’s a coming over from the King of Spain, that ever was in England for any Embassador.
Late home, and what with business and my boy’s roguery my mind being unquiet, I went to bed.

Things I miss, I do not find.
Things I find, I eat—
an essential tragedy—
and in eating, lose.
Things I take, I talk to, late
in my unquiet bed.


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 1 September 1660.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Parenthetical Question

Strange marks have begun to appear on my arms. Like birthmarks, they’re bare of hair, raised like welts into an embossed design. It has been suggested that I might be a victim of alien abduction. I chew on this idea until it is nothing but gristle. Does it happen while I sleep? Might it be happening right now?

The design spreads slower than a vine and faster than fire: slower than a vine because it doesn’t grow at all when watched, not even by the breadth of an eyelash; faster than fire because it doesn’t depend on oxygen but feeds upon inattention, which is limitless. Each mark is a nearly perfect section of an arc, so the overall design resembles — if I may put it crudely — a clusterfuck of parentheses.

And among all the other questions one might raise about this, I find myself wondering most of all: Why my arms? I hug myself and rock, forward and back.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Reluctant Prophet

Early to wait upon my Lord at White Hall, and with him to the Duke’s chamber. So to my office in Seething Lane. Dined at home, and after dinner to my Lord again, who told me that he is ordered to go suddenly to sea, and did give me some orders to be drawing up against his going. This afternoon I agreed to let my house quite out of my hands to Mr. Dalton (one of the wine sellers to the King, with whom I had drunk in the old wine cellar two or three times) for 41l. At night made even at Privy Seal for this month against tomorrow to give up possession, but we know not to whom, though we most favour Mr. Bickerstaffe, with whom and Mr. Matthews we drank late after office was done at the Sun, discoursing what to do about it tomorrow against Baron, and so home and to bed. Blessed be God all things continue well with and for me. I pray God fit me for a change of my fortune.

I see a sea of hands,
a wine seller in the wine cellar,
a night made even with the sun.
What to do? I pray for
a change of tune.


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 31 August 1660.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

The weight of inequality

Parmanu:

In the days that followed, I found myself thinking often of the common man on the street and the gap between us. I imagined people – the elevator boy, the waiter in a restaurant, the pizza delivery guy – looking at me, sizing up my net value, and comparing it to their own. On streets I often hid my camera. I sensed a strange notion of guilt, for things I possessed and they did not. I found this condition disturbing, and I wondered how others like me coped. I spoke with some friends.

“We know inequality as an abstraction, and we think we understand it. But putting a number to it, not statistically but in the context of an everyday situation, is something else.”

I was with an ex-colleague who now divided his time between the corporate and social sector.

I continued: “This is what happened when I gave that figure to the barber – I put down a number that made the gap between us explicit. Before this incident I ignored these people, now I think of them everyday.”

“I see what you mean,” he said.

“You live here – how do you cope with this on a daily basis?”

“I deal with it by contributing to social causes. And I tell myself that to do this, I need to keep a certain level of prosperity – good clothes, a car, an apartment, and so on. I need to keep myself satisfied, so that I can have an impact on others.”

“Hmmm.”

Posted on by Dave Bonta

My dream about learning to dance

At the center of an unnamed European city, a large park doesn’t open its gates until noon. People line up to get in and sit at round tables drinking wine, eating small cakes or playing accordions. Our friend who lives in the city says if they would only open at a reasonable hour — 7:00 or 8:00 — hikers could start their journeys there, setting off on one of ten long-distance trails, which were once the routes that pilgrims took to visit all the lost fingers of the national saint. It’s crucial, he says, to begin at the right place, like a ball that must be thrown from behind the head. I go in search of a conference dedicated to a book they claim I wrote, though I have no memory of it. By the time I find the venue at the far end of the park, the last paper has been delivered and they are pushing the tables back to dance. A tall, thin woman insists on showing me the steps, walking behind me, raising my arms as high as they’ll go. Slower, she says, slower! Let the steps find you. Eventually we are almost motionless except for a slight twitching of the hands. I turn around to face her and find she’s somehow slipped away, leaving in her place an elm tree full of sparrows.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

There are words and there are words:

This entry is part 9 of 18 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Summer 2013

 

in every language a surfeit of words— words for bread and hunger,
words for pain and cry, for rain and sleep and sunlight; words
for milk and salt, a baby’s spit, an old man’s phlegm, a night-
bird’s cry; words for the way the wind sounds, whipping
and soughing through the trees; words for cuss and cough
and kiss, words for flame and burn, blood, heat—

There are words and there are words, for sometime in the past
someone must have seen a white snakeroot glowing in the meadow,
a seed burst into flower or shrivel into dust; or heard
the tinny orchestra of tree crickets warming up at dusk,
oily bassoon of frogs in the river’s sludge-filled mouth
which must have moved him to work his lips into a shape

mimicking their sound, yet every sound he made
was always shadow— And is this why we want to throw
ourselves at the elusive, burrow into the music: press the wrists,
the fingers of the hand into the board; draw the bow’s whole length
across the string as if by quivering, it’s possible to leach
more of the quickly fading summer light we love?

~ впиватьса (vpivatsia)

For Pavel Ilyashov

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Little Afterlife Song

We found all well in the morning below stairs, but the boy in a sad plight of seeming sorrow; but he is the most cunning rogue that ever I met with of his age.
To White Hall, where I met with the Act of Indemnity (so long talked of and hoped for), with the Act of Rate for Pole-money, and for judicial proceedings.
At Westminster Hall I met with Mr. Paget the lawyer, and dined with him at Heaven. This afternoon my wife went to Mr. Pierce’s wife’s child’s christening, and was urged to be godmother, but I advised her before-hand not to do it, so she did not, but as proxy for my Lady Jemimah. This the first day that ever I saw my wife wear black patches since we were married! My Lord came to town to-day, but coming not home till very late I staid till 10 at night, and so home on foot. Mr. Sheply and Mr. Childe this night at the tavern.

I met with a hit,
I met with a hope,
I met with a lawyer in heaven.
I saw my Lord coming on foot,
a child at the tavern.


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 30 August 1660.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Closet

(Office day). Before I went to the office my wife and I examined my boy Will about his stealing of things, as we doubted yesterday; but he denied all with the greatest subtlety and confidence in the world. To the office, and after office then to the Church, where we took another view of the place where we had resolved to build a gallery, and have set men about doing it. Home to dinner, and there I found my wife had discovered my boy Will’s theft and a great deal more than we imagined, at which I was vexed and intend to put him away.
To my office at the Privy Seal in the afternoon, and from thence at night to the Bull Head, with Mount, Luellin, and others, and hence to my father’s, and he being at my uncle Fenner’s, I went thither to him, and there sent for my boy’s father and talked with him about his son, and had his promise that if I will send home his boy, he will take him notwithstanding his indenture.
Home at night, and find that my wife had found out more of the boy’s stealing 6s. out of W. Hewer’s closet, and hid it in the house of office, at which my heart was troubled. To bed, and caused the boy’s clothes to be brought up to my chamber. But after we were all a-bed, the wench (which lies in our chamber) called us to listen of a sudden, which put my wife into such a fright that she shook every joint of her, and a long time that I could not get her out of it. The noise was the boy, we did believe, got in a desperate mood out of his bed to do himself or William [Hewer] some mischief. But the wench went down and got a candle lighted, and finding the boy in bed, and locking the doors fast, with a candle burning all night, we slept well, but with a great deal of fear.

I examine my head and find a closet:
a boy’s clothes,
mischief and a candle,
a great fear.


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Wednesday 29 August 1660.