Short and narrow poem

 Two things

I detest

pretentiousness

narcissism

yet I am

an academic!

so really

I must hate

these things

mostly 

in 

myself 

Title

I dislike your inspirational quotes

though I don't dislike you 

I dislike your facile memes

your taste for abstraction and sentimentality 

"creativity" won't save anyone

from desperation and rage

on a bad day 

a song might be written 

a painting painted

it's still a bad day 

 

Pretentiousness

I hate pretention

I tell myself

but do I? 

In other people, sure

I root it out in myself

too, won't say certain words

the pretentious ones

but is that enough?   

2nd epilogue to "Delusions of Mediocrity"

I think it is Oscar Pettiford playing bass

on this album of Lee Konitz and Warne Marsh.

Later I'll look it up, and change it if I am wrong. 

I had this LP as a kid 

and studied the liner notes with a certain earnestness; 

the song is called "Don't Squawk." 

When the song came on I was reading 

sound of wave in channel 

by Stephen Ratcliffe, and earlier today

I was reading his book about Campion and song

in a coffee shop, after reading a few weeks ago

his letters to and from New York School poet Barbara Guest. 

I am thinking of my poem recently completed

called "Delusions of Mediocrity," and wondering

if I can keep up this vein of flat writing

any more. This diary of uninteresting things

happening, but written in dull language too! But

people liked my poem, the one about how bacon

makes a noise that I didn't quite fathom 

and other things of equal banality;  

other things, too, my distaste for epiphanies  

and phrases like "man's search for meaning," 

redolent of a time when I was young

and people actually talked like that.  

 

Epilogue

 I was wondering about the sizzle of bacon

but that is just the sound that kind of thing makes

no more mysterious than any other

just like green plants reflects light

that looks green to us

that's our name for that kind of chromatic "sizzle" in our brains

I was hearing people's "vocal fry"

and "up talk" on the radio 

then some nasal person being interviewed too

and judging them for those qualities 

in their voices

I probably shouldn't do that

even if I don't like it 

it will be ok 

it's like judging the odors of herbs when I come in the house

Delusions of Mediocrity

 I remember when I wrote my poem

"Delusions of Mediocrity." It was rejected by several

fine magazines. It was part of my "bad poem" project

so the editors were not wrong. They could have realized 

that it was bad-on-purpose, not bad because I couldn't do 

any better--or not--but it didn't matter. They were

right either way.

                  I don't care anyway for

"fine writing" or lyric epiphanies, and have poor

powers of observation. I can't carry a notebook around

and observe interesting things. That's 

not how my mind works. Mostly in poems, I've found,

the interesting things in life don't fit, they get left out

along with the boring stuff that holds everything together.

For example, I suffered from horrible "earworm" as a kid, with

the line from a translation of Breton, "Jersey Guernsey 

in sombre and illustrious weather." And with the opening of 

Pound's "Seafarer": "May I for my own self / song's truth reckon /

journey's jargon." The suffering was intense 

and persistent, but I had nobody to complain to

since it was of my own doing. (Now this example,

I don't know if it is interesting or dull,

or whether it belongs in this poem at all.) 

                                Meditation cured my earworm

many years later. There are still tunes and phrases 

rattling in the rafters, but I don't fear them

anymore. Perhaps the syndrome is the fear of catchy 

musical and verbal cadences, not the words, 

harmless in themselves.

Regret for the past is pointless, I decided 

in a fit of insomnia last night. Regret implies that 

we can do better now--something far from certain. 

We should "regret" only the present, but try to change it 

at the same time, by making it better, somehow. 

Does that make any sense to you?

                      So much introspection is without value, 

anyway, like keeping score

for a game no longer being played, moving pointless 

mental tokens from one column to another, then never being able

to come up with the same count on successive attempts. 

You get the idea. 

                I spend years introspecting in the wrong way

without gaining much insight into myself or others. 

                                                    Insomnia too 

is a name for something not bad in and of itself. (Sleep

comes as a relief, sure, but we never experience 

that relief, waking up groggy much later.) After all,

insomnia gave birth to this poem, "Delusions of Mediocrity," a second

attempt to write a poem with this brilliant title. 

                                                       Once I read

an article about how not to be a mediocre jazz pianist, but

since "mediocre" means average, then for me 

that would be a vast improvement, right? 

                                    A Chopin waltz 

lies abandoned on the music stand, 

then it is not, as I come back to it again. It is not 

difficult, maybe, but it is unforgiving. Why do my fingers

fly, improvising over "Bemsha Swing" but stumble over themselves

here? Yet I can't play those bebop clichés that sound so good

when other people play them.  

                          I think of my childhood fantasies. 

I wanted to play jazz piano, publish poems 

in magazines (see above), and have a wife who wore lipstick. 

Nothing too ambitious; most of that I've done, though

not exactly in the way I thought it would work out.

None of those things is really what I thought it was

going to be. They are subtly different, but in a way that 

robs them of some portion of their inherent joy

and satisfaction.   

Sometimes I wonder, too, why bacon

sizzles in the pan. I know sound is vibration

but what is vibrating here, the grease? I understand

how a drum makes noise, two drum heads vibrating 

sympathetically and making the air inside 

hum too (when struck with stick), and then

sound waves emanating from there.

                                     The bacon, though,

I do not understand, I'd really like to know, but

it seems dumb to ask.   

 

I wonder

I wonder what came first, the words or the music? Did someone

"set" the words to music, or was the tune always there? It seems

dumb to ask, but I'd really like to know.

                                            I wonder

why bacon sizzles in the pan. I understand how the drumstick

hits the drum head, causing the air inside the drum

to move, the other dream head vibrating sympathetically 

and the air around the drum carrying the sounds waves, but

I don't know what vibrates in the pan. Is it the grease? 

(I decide not to worry about the "flat' language

of my poems, not to worry about my poor

powers of observation. I hate epiphanies

anyway and "fine writing.") 

                        Why do we need a theory only

of difficult things? Zen cured my ear worm, I might say. 

Tunes still rattle in the rafters, but I don't care about them. 

Other emotions, too, ebb and flow, dread, regret, rancor. 

Joy even. 

        Insomnia is just the fear of insomnia, nobody says they 

have insomnia at 11 in the morning, after all. Earworm is just

the fear of the persistent tune, not the tune itself.    

Why does bacon sizzle

 "We don't have a theory of something being easy to do or of things going according to plan, things working out. Theory means something is difficult."

            "I wonder why bacon sizzles in the pan. What is it that's vibrating? I understand why the drum head vibrates and moves the air inside, but not the bacon." 

                            "There is a theory of poetic language, it might be wrong or right, but there is a theory of it, or several. But we have no theory of language not being poetic, the absence of whatever that is that is 'poetic."

                            "Why do we need that? We only need to know about the difficult cases, like the bacon. I literally do not know why it sizzles, yet it seems dumb to ask. When we understand, we move on, or so I'd thought."

                    "That what I'm saying, we have it wrong. Easiness is difficult to understand. We don't know how those easy things occur."

               

Favorite word

Chopin waltz abandoned on music stand

until it is not: I return to it. I wonder why

my fingers feel free playing "Bemsha Swing" but not 

Chopin.  

            If you ask someone their favorite word

they will say love, not their favorite word 

at all (if you ask me) but some pet idea; 

they will never say naif or another

word quirky or fun to pronounce. 

The same with sentences, they will 

offer you a sentence that they endorse

but not one that has an interesting ring to it

like Beckett's "Je dors peu, et le peu que je dors,

je le dors le jour."

                                The idea that

if you could just adopt the proper attitude

toward everything, find not just terminology

but the right tone of voice to say those words,

that would settle things. Tweak your damn verbiage 

and you'll do fine! 

                    A recitation of a poem 

is a musical performance, I read in a book on

Arabic Poetics. If so, what bad musicians you are,

poets and literary critics, actors.  

***

Zen cured my earworm: there are still tunes

rattling around in the rafters, but they aren't

bothersome. Anxiety, too,

is just a normal emotion waxing 

and waning. An anxiety

disorder is just giving too much importance to these

ebbs and flows. Is insomnia just

the fear of insomnia? Nothing in itself?  

The relief at falling asleep can only be felt 

on waking up, refreshed,

if even then: often the waking will be groggy. 

Often, I'll only know I've slept

if I have also dreamt. That is my measuring rod. 

***  

I think of the absurdly detailed instruction manual

for the new water bottle, in several languages. My instruction

would be "fill, drink."  

***

Why does prosaic mean dull? Where does my fear

of "flat" language come from? Why does bacon

sizzle in the pan? 

***

I don't like those little "lyrical moments" but often I have wondered

why bacon sizzles in the pan. What is vibrating, exactly? I understand 

the vibrating drum head, how it moves the air, but not

the bacon, yet it seems dumb to ask.   

                                        I wonder

why I don't like most poetry I read. I wait for packages to arrive,

books I've ordered myself. Many are disappointments,

nobody's fault.

                My observational skills aren't great,

I've noticed. I don't have little epiphany puffs

just sometimes a funny phrase will pop into my head.   

        

  

Waltz

Chopin waltz abandoned on music stand

until it is not: I return to it. I wonder why

my fingers feel free playing "Bemsha Swing" but not 

Chopin.  

        Sound of Wave in Channel by Stephen Ratcliffe 

arrives today. Package left outside a door I rarely use

but they send me photo of this half-assed delivery

and I go down and get the package, on top of someone's 

delivery of tissues:

 

 

 

EARWORM

Zen cured my earworm: there are still tunes

rattling around in the rafters, but they aren't

bothersome. Anxiety, too,

is just a normal emotion waxing 

and waning. An anxiety

disorder is just giving too much importance to these

ebbs and flows. Is insomnia just

the fear of insomnia? Nothing in itself?  

Why does prosaic mean dull? Where does my fear

of "flat" language come from? Why does bacon

sizzle in the pan? 

The Relief

The relief at falling asleep can only be felt 

on waking up, refreshed,

if even then: often the waking will be groggy. 

Often, I'll only know I've slept

if I have also dreamt. That is my measuring rod.   

***

I think of the absurdly detailed instruction manual

for the new water bottle, in several languages. 

If I could cut through that bullshit, then maybe

other kinds, too, would be vulnerable 

to my keen intelligence? Alas, no.   

                         

I've been reading some letters and poems

 I've been reading some letters and poems exchanged between Barbara Guest and Stephen Ratcliffe. It's a delightful book, just out from Chax books, and it's inspiring me to write a new kind of poem. By mistake they first sent me the Selected poems of Rachel Blau DuPlessis. Also a wonderful poet, but a kind of writing I don't relate to personally in the same way.  They generously allowed me to keep that book too.  

I think the way Ratcliffe writes allows certain things to get into the poem that I am not allowing into my poems.  I won't imitate his style or procedure, those being unique to him; even less his tone of voice. 

I don't like those little "lyrical moments" but often I have wondered

why bacon sizzles in the pan. What is vibrating, exactly? I understand 

the vibrating drum head, how it moves the air, but not

the bacon, yet it seems dumb to ask.   

                                        I wonder

why I don't like most things I read. I wait for packages to arrive,

things I've ordered myself. Many are disappointments,

nobody's fault.

                My observational skills aren't great,

I've noticed. I don't have little epiphany puffs

just sometimes a funny phrase will pop into my head.   

INSTRUCTIONS FOR WATER BOTTLE

 Fill with water

Drink  

ENEMIES

 

  

I find the idea of having enemies silly

Where would I find one?

In alleyways of grief?

In forgotten childhood toolshed of twisted intentions?

What would I do with an enemy if I had one?

What enemy could harm me more than I have harmed myself?

****

What what I do with an enemy if I had one?

Plot slow revenge, steam open letters, 

booby trap my poems?

***

We could do harm to each other

by turns, or both at the same time

Anger, hatred, be careful when someone gives these gifts to you

They are not very good ones

***

And what of lovers?

They are easier to find than enemies. 

Not people to got to bed with

(Though there's that too!)

Or set up domestic arrangements

But anyone who will love you for a moment or two

Or deeply and long 

WASH ME!

 You can write

in dust

by taking away

the dust

Prologue to a Book of Dreams

 I do not revere the wisdom of dreams.

Absurd, fragmentary, sexually 'inappropriate,"

they do not form cute little surrealist parables--

at most they are inane allegories of failure. 

Writing them down, though,

with no apologies for these inadequacies, 

as mere evidence of having slept in early hours

of the morning, I find they constitute, 

over time, a chronicle of fruitful misunderstandings,

where error serves clear purposes if looked at

with a squint. Last night, for example, I dreamed

I had grown two inches in a week. taking pride

in my new height, until I awoke, not even disappointed

when I remembered this, my stature unaltered. 

It is no hypocrisy, then, to write a book of dreams

while despising the dreams of other people, the whole damned

genre. The mistake is to look for beauty, coherence,

symmetry, the clarity of waking hours, 

when their value lies in precisely the opposite.