Today it felt like spring in New York
for the first time this year, the sun
cutting through nascent chill to coax
all the urban stool pigeons outdoors.
Squeal after squeal blocked passage
on the crowded Chelsea sidewalks as
all the city's hibernating socialites
found each other again, not having bothered
all winter, but here we all are again
out in the open, it's been so long,
the embraces so public, the shock so
self-satisfied that MY friends would
find me here, so fortuitously visible,
no YOU look great, let's do lunch soon.
A city does not bud and bloom so charmingly
as other places, I suppose.
Saturday, April 2, 2011
If there is lunch
Si hay almuerzo…
the sign reads, suddenly bored at the prospect.
We’re just a restaurant…
We serve food…maybe…
Food is really the least of it, see,
because whether or not, Si sí hay
almuerzo, si no hay almuerzo,
the important part lies in the dot
dot dot, which leads to the same thing
in any old tongue: If there is lunch…
…sex?
If not, come back tomorrow. On the side
of the wall, a friendly reminder, Don’t piss here
you pigs, this is a business! And in the streets
exemplify participatory citizenship
combine concern for the environment with voting rights.
No botar basura, No
votar basura, Prohibido!
botar basura, Prohibido votar
basura, Prohibido No botar basura
so DON’T THROW TRASH HERE MOTHERFUCKERS.
In case you had doubts, it’s also prohibited
to Not Vote For Trash,
the kind that keeps your schools overcrowded,
builds riverwalks while kids contract disease,
throws fruit basket bones while rewriting laws,
meanwhile leaving you without the ability to conjugate
a verb on paper. Oh, to be fourteen
years old, illiterate, and none
the better or worse for wear.
the sign reads, suddenly bored at the prospect.
We’re just a restaurant…
We serve food…maybe…
Food is really the least of it, see,
because whether or not, Si sí hay
almuerzo, si no hay almuerzo,
the important part lies in the dot
dot dot, which leads to the same thing
in any old tongue: If there is lunch…
…sex?
If not, come back tomorrow. On the side
of the wall, a friendly reminder, Don’t piss here
you pigs, this is a business! And in the streets
exemplify participatory citizenship
combine concern for the environment with voting rights.
No botar basura, No
votar basura, Prohibido!
botar basura, Prohibido votar
basura, Prohibido No botar basura
so DON’T THROW TRASH HERE MOTHERFUCKERS.
In case you had doubts, it’s also prohibited
to Not Vote For Trash,
the kind that keeps your schools overcrowded,
builds riverwalks while kids contract disease,
throws fruit basket bones while rewriting laws,
meanwhile leaving you without the ability to conjugate
a verb on paper. Oh, to be fourteen
years old, illiterate, and none
the better or worse for wear.
My Girlfriend
"My girlfriend is allergic to tomatoes,
so please, leave them off that second order."
Of course, I hate tomatoes and,
while I'm not allergic,
I don't want to eat them,
so I'll pick them off the other
dish when I get home.
See, my girlfriend's the jealous type,
she conveniently steps in whenever I'm
hit on at a party.
That's actually how we started dating.
A girl was coming on too strong
and suddenly
there was my new girlfriend,
signaling,
back off.
Recently, though, she's gotten very good
at keeping others at bay.
She's very subtle.
I keep eating the extra
meals I order for her.
And each time I see my gut
growing
in the mirror
I worry,
just maybe,
she's starting to exist.
Poetry Recommendation
[Tadeusz Rozewicz]
new poems
new poems
translated from the Polish by Bill Johnston
(Archipelago Books)
gateway
by Tadeusz Rozewicz
Lasciate ogni speranza
Voi ch'entrate
all hope abandon
ye who enter here
the inscription at the entrance to hell
in Dante's Divine Comedy
take heart!
beyond that gateway
there is no hell
hell has been dismantled
by theologists
and psychoanalysts
has been turned into an allegory
for reasons humanitarian
and educational
take heart!
beyond the gateway
there is more of the same
two drunken gravediggers
sit by a hole
they're drinking non-alcoholic beer
snacking on sausage
winking at us
playing soccer
with Adam's skull
beneath the cross
the hole waits
for tomorrow's deceased
the stiff is on its way
take heart!
here we will wait for the final
judgment
the pit fills with water
cigarette butts float there
take heart!
beyond the gateway
there will be no history
no goodness no poetry
and what will there be
stranger?
there will be stones
stone
upon stone
upon stone a stone
and on that stone
another
stone
[2000]
After seven months
I got a job offer today.
I say it plainly because
I cut my hair too short
In celebration.
The internet was down in the entire city today. No really, it was.
A fading as steady as a page over
twenty-six years, the word that was spoken
into you before you understood,
the incipient thing that assumed your form
and whose shape you first knew when you first took
in hand a pencil, tracing in desperate
strokes a handful of letters - they
became you - and soon growing accustomed
to grace endeared themselves to those who met
their meaning, though it slipped away from you,
the last part first on an afternoon in
a waiting room, people and their problems
lining the walls, and you at the window
mustering the remnant: every library
card, handwritten note and checkbook signed,
every schoolbook inscribed erased from muscle
and memory, so foreign to yourself you felt
you must become a patient under a
more practiced eye, to read you back into
being. And waiting, it turned out, was all
you could do. Those letters may have come
to you one day late, but by then you'd
forgotten you were trying to remember.
twenty-six years, the word that was spoken
into you before you understood,
the incipient thing that assumed your form
and whose shape you first knew when you first took
in hand a pencil, tracing in desperate
strokes a handful of letters - they
became you - and soon growing accustomed
to grace endeared themselves to those who met
their meaning, though it slipped away from you,
the last part first on an afternoon in
a waiting room, people and their problems
lining the walls, and you at the window
mustering the remnant: every library
card, handwritten note and checkbook signed,
every schoolbook inscribed erased from muscle
and memory, so foreign to yourself you felt
you must become a patient under a
more practiced eye, to read you back into
being. And waiting, it turned out, was all
you could do. Those letters may have come
to you one day late, but by then you'd
forgotten you were trying to remember.
Friday, April 1, 2011
We're Missing
The mark on Evolution,
Or so says this woman
Discover interviewed
Last month, professor
Woman who rides
Her bike everywhere
Says we’re thinking too
Small – that is, too few.
Ignoring the role single
Celled creatures, bacteria
Amoeba and the like,
Play in the progression
Of the big species
That we care about.
She says we don’t do
It on our own, our big
chromosomes spontaneously
Mutating traits to thrive.
We devour the small
Things whole. Incorporate
Entire genomes. Clams
For example that catch
Algae in one of their bi-
Valves but don’t digest
The Green colonies,
Don’t break them down
For energy once and
Have to hunt again
Tomorrow, no, the clams
Just learned to turn
Their shells translucent
So the algae sit there
In the clam-gut forever
And photosynthesize.
Humans are born with
Millions of bacteria in
Our human-guts all
Pre-programmed to
Break down food for
Us, too. We use them
To make our energy
So our DNA never had
To figure out how
On its own. She’s not
Calling Darwin and Mendel
Straight white men,
This professor, she
Hasn’t the slightest
Idea who they fucked,
But doesn’t it seem
Fitting that these fellows
Gave the credit all
To the big beasts
And their DNA full
Of eureka mutations
To solve it all, all
There is to survival,
When in fact maybe
We just got good
At consuming things
And calling them,
Their work, our own.
Or so says this woman
Discover interviewed
Last month, professor
Woman who rides
Her bike everywhere
Says we’re thinking too
Small – that is, too few.
Ignoring the role single
Celled creatures, bacteria
Amoeba and the like,
Play in the progression
Of the big species
That we care about.
She says we don’t do
It on our own, our big
chromosomes spontaneously
Mutating traits to thrive.
We devour the small
Things whole. Incorporate
Entire genomes. Clams
For example that catch
Algae in one of their bi-
Valves but don’t digest
The Green colonies,
Don’t break them down
For energy once and
Have to hunt again
Tomorrow, no, the clams
Just learned to turn
Their shells translucent
So the algae sit there
In the clam-gut forever
And photosynthesize.
Humans are born with
Millions of bacteria in
Our human-guts all
Pre-programmed to
Break down food for
Us, too. We use them
To make our energy
So our DNA never had
To figure out how
On its own. She’s not
Calling Darwin and Mendel
Straight white men,
This professor, she
Hasn’t the slightest
Idea who they fucked,
But doesn’t it seem
Fitting that these fellows
Gave the credit all
To the big beasts
And their DNA full
Of eureka mutations
To solve it all, all
There is to survival,
When in fact maybe
We just got good
At consuming things
And calling them,
Their work, our own.
Ode to the Bronx Zoo Cobra
A pharoah from an ancient world
now forced to prowl these streets alone.
You stopped at Sbarro where you curled
up to a rat and ricotta calzone.
Hear the twitters tweeting twaddle,
hear them joke and mock
your power.
Until you chase them as they waddle
down the city block
and cower.
Oh tragic beast of spring-loaded venom,
hidden 'neath your rough-scaled hood.
We fear your fangs with poison in 'em
and whimper as you slither through our hood.
Slink on down and catch the one,
stop off at Times Square,
sun yourself in neon.
Watch as all the tourists run,
and hiss at their despair,
"fly you silly peons."
For one great week you had us all
eating from the palm of your... back.
You even managed to cast a pall
over the star of Rebecca Black.
But perhaps we misjudged
your famous media romp.
After all, what do we know?
The details were fudged!
You were just a fan of STOMP
trying to catch dinner and a show.
now forced to prowl these streets alone.
You stopped at Sbarro where you curled
up to a rat and ricotta calzone.
Hear the twitters tweeting twaddle,
hear them joke and mock
your power.
Until you chase them as they waddle
down the city block
and cower.
Oh tragic beast of spring-loaded venom,
hidden 'neath your rough-scaled hood.
We fear your fangs with poison in 'em
and whimper as you slither through our hood.
Slink on down and catch the one,
stop off at Times Square,
sun yourself in neon.
Watch as all the tourists run,
and hiss at their despair,
"fly you silly peons."
For one great week you had us all
eating from the palm of your... back.
You even managed to cast a pall
over the star of Rebecca Black.
But perhaps we misjudged
your famous media romp.
After all, what do we know?
The details were fudged!
You were just a fan of STOMP
trying to catch dinner and a show.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
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