Funhouse Vardøger1
For the LH Fallen
The First Thing You Need to Understand (Never Leads to a Last Thing)—(for MG)
He Loves Her Very Much
His Double
I don’t know what you know about gardening
Frog Pond I
Frog Pond II
Frog Pond III
Life Sucks. So What?
Pus Theory
Christmas, 1996
Icarus Revisited (for BH)
Drowning in the Fountain of Eternal Life (for EW)
Bloom Where You’re Planted; Rot Where You’ve Buried Yourself (for JT)
Zu gescheit ist dumm (Too Clever is Stupid.)
A Gift
Beauty is a Guillotine . . . as heavy, as light
I am not a Whore
Funhouse Vardøger1
Kierkegaard, the story goes,
While writing Sickness Unto Death,
Or maybe it was Either/Or2,
Watched the Danish village clock outside his window
And, like a foolish robot, emerged every 15 minutes
To stand in the village square, looking, for all the world,
Yet another layabout, with no better place to be.
In the sunlight,
Everybody knows
She is smart and funny (and pretty, of course, always pretty),
The center of all attention, yet as organized as matryoshkas3
No wasted space, no skulls left table-bound
Focused as the snap
of the optometrist’s new, stronger, better lens.
In public,
Everybody knows
He is smart and funny, little else.
Dripping jackassery, he jollies passersby,
Only the ozone smell of mysticism leaves an invisible question mark–
That and his ego, his ego, his ever-expanding ego4.
To herself,
She wrestles doubts, not pinning them,
But playing for time, waiting for the ref’s
Whistle to call an end, a blessed end.
Inside,
He dips balls of sorrow
Into joke-chocolate,
Waiting to pop them into the abyss.
In Kierkegaard’s doorway,
One foot transcendent, one stuck in here-now-ness
They kiss.
Their doppelgängers embrace, meld.
One walker departs, holding its own hand.
_________________________
1A Scandinavian spirit indirectly related to the Gnostic notion of “doubleness,” or the spiritual existence of both a Platonic ideal and its Fleisch und Blut representation.
4Howard, a former seminarian when this poem was written, enjoyed making reference to theological works he had read but not understood.
3Depending on the translator, this can be rendered as either “Russian nesting dolls” or “buttered cucumber.”
4Howard appears often to believe his poetry was to be paid for by the word, and repeated phrases for no particular reason. No reason whatsoever. None.
For the LH Fallen
In 1675, the Indians assaulted another house at Oyster River . . . meeting with a good old man, [William] Beard, [and] killed him and cut off his head and set it upon a pole in derision. Not far off they burned another house and barn.”—A History of the Town of Durham
In my backyard, when I was young
Were half a dozen stones
With funny words carved into them
And underneath them bones.
The smallest one said “Little Fanny,”
Which always brought me laughter
She died before she drew a breath
Or just a little after.
The first girl that I ever loved,
At seven, Sheila Draves,
Gave me a kiss then slapped my face
While sitting on some graves.
And in my youth I never wondered
About the bodies, dank and rotten,
A foot or two beneath my feet
Humanity forgotten.
Today we’ll talk about today,
And let the past have yesterday
But let us take a minute now
For those cast off along the way.
“And of the dead, speak only good”
May be a Latin serum
If art’s a higher truth though, then:
De mortuis nil nisi verum.
And speak with truth I’ll try to do
Of four who didn’t make it
Success is like a burning light
And some folks just can’t take it.
Etymology (for GP)
Yesterday, as I write this,
I talked with a con, a lifer, a jailbird, a felon
Whose crime was
Innocence.
He seems too good,
Or trusting
Or sincere
To have really done
The things I know he did.
He should have a name like:
Soapy or Cakes or Mugsy or even Doc.
Instead,
He is
George. Go figure.
We talked etymology, George and I did,
The origins of “Casing the Joint.”
(Did I mention George did hard time,
Alone in a cell Isolated from other Cons?)
He’d considered this question during his daysmonthsyears
And his best thinking told him
Casing the Joint
Derived from looking
At window casings
Before a burglary.
Logical? Yes. Creative? Perhaps. Accurate? Absolutely not
Because of a wasted college minor in linguistics and a near-autistic reading of dictionaries as a child, I could give you the true etymology.
But I won’t.
I’ve not spent yearsmonthsdays
Considering anything,
Turning it over and over in my brain
Only to find
I didn’t know more
Than when I began.
In general,
My ignorance Cost me no time at all.
The First Thing You Need to Understand (Never Leads to a Last Thing)—(for MG)
It’s hard:
- To be the smartest man in any room any where
- To keep quiet about being that man
It’s hard:
- To find the way to riches without work
- To acknowledge the gaps in that mental road map.
It’s hard:
- To accept the Times Crossword in pen signifies nothing
- To know, in the bones, proofs of the impossible don’t make them possible
It’s hard:
- To keep from proving it anyway. To wit:
- Nothing is better than having a good job.
- A piece of moldy cheese is better than nothing.
- Therefore, a piece of moldy cheese is better than having a job.
Quod Erat Demonstratum
It’s hard:
To keep from walking out the door when pinheads like Keith and Becky
Make me look for a job,
When the cheese is just starting to discolor.
He loves her very much.
He knows that.
She knows that.
Who knows what she feels?
Not he.
Not she.
He feels so empty, pouring himself out for her,
Exposing his joints, his bones, his marrow.
Knowing she may smile. Then say,
“Thank you.”
And walk away.
She says she only wanted sex. And maybe she did. Or does. Who knows?
Not he.
Not she.
He isn’t built that way, the way she needs a man to be.
Not built to fuck and fly away. He wants to hold her,
Stroke her, love her.
And she’s been as honest as she can be:
I just want sex. And you’ve wrecked that.
He loves her very much.
He knows that.
She knows that
And wishes he would just shut up.
He gazes into the mirror.
She looks back, her eyes downcast.
He reaches a hand out, palm forward
And watches her imaged fingers come to join his
Tips touching, electrical charge.
Her eyes remain hidden in plain sight.
He doesn’t want to bother her,
The woman in the mirror.
She will not look, so he will leave.
As he rises, shakes his head to clear it,
The mirror speaks.
“Please sit down. Please.”
And in that second, split like an atom,
She looks into his soul.
And that’s enough
For now.
>
I don’t know what you know about gardening
(But you’ll know less when I am done with you.)
They did not eat an apple in that garden.
They swallowed the word ‘apple’ instead
And we continue tasting letters,
Wondering why they are not sweet
And juicy and made for pies.
I have no more words for you, my friend,
To show the way you make me feel
About you and me and life.
Pick me up, bite hard and taste me
And feel the juice run down your chin.
Frog Pond I
In this life,
the choice, ultimately,
is what size frog
in what size pond
do you want to be?
Then ribbut like hell
until the gig impales you
Frog Pond II
Some frogs are too small
for even the smallest pond.
They need a creek,
a swamp,
a puddle.
In even the ugliest family,
there is the prettiest girl.
In even the stupidest family
there is the family scholar.
In even the smallest pond,
Frog Pond III
Control is not the issue,
although it is always an issue.
Power is not the issue,
although it is an issue.
Freedom to have an impact on the world,
no matter how small an impact,
or how small a world,
is the issue.
Life Sucks. So What?
I was sitting with a teenager who was really in a funk.
Her father was psychotic and her mother was a drunk.
She had no friends, she failed at school, she told a lot of lies.
And the truth was she was empty, which should come as no surprise.
Although she was just a babyww, her face was lined with pain.
Years of abuse from those she loved may have driven her insane.
The tears poured down her pretty face, said “That’s not how life should be.”
She seemed to expect answers, I said, “Whaddya want from me?”
All I know is:
Chorus
Life sucks. So what?
Life sucks. So what?
Life sucks. So what?
Life sucks.
So whaddya wanna do about it?
I said to her crestfallen face, from the Cradle to the tomb,
Life isn’t fair. For instance, I was hated in the womb.
The woman who got knocked up with me knew she couldn’t take no more,
Though her city had a million souls, she was known as the town whore.
She’d learned that:
Chorus
Yanked out of that unfriendly cave, I became a ward of the state,
And was placed with a foster family, who received the standard rate
For cleaning me and changing me and making sure I ate
I’m not sure if they loved me, but they couldn’t have cared enough to hate.
Deep down they knew:
Chorus
Eventually adopted by nuclear family
Who were no more dysfunctional than anyone else I see,
My grandfather had a breakdown, my uncle was a thief,
My father made a living, making ill-fitting false teeth.
They’d learned:
Chorus
By the time I was a teenager, I was just as shattered as you.
Shooting dope and telling stories that couldn’t be true.
Now I’ve thought about it, I stared down in the void,
And seen the answer written there, that will always fill me with joy.
And that answer is:
Chorus
Pus Theory
You just wait for the pressure to build up, you just wait for the build-up to to blow,
Then what you spew out of your mouth, mind, or hand, can be called a piece of art you know.
Whatever pops into your mind and plops out on a page
Artistically represents your joy, sorrow, loss and rage.
Art is art when an artist has found it,
Take a blank wall, put a frame around it
Don’t waste time trying to master your craft
Just set sail on the ocean of art with your ego as your only life raft
You don’t have to be that clever, you don’t have to have much soul
Jackson Pollock didn’t know what he’d get when he poured that paint out of a bowl.
You don’t have to study your craft, you don’t have to be that clever
When you subscribe to the pus theory of artistic endeavor.
Art is art when an artist has found it,
Take a blank wall, put a frame around it
Don’t waste time trying to master your craft
Just set sail on the ocean of art with your ego as your only life raft
Artists of a feather gotta hang together so they won’t hang separately,
Vision is a tired anachronism; you want marketability
Money is really what matters; vision is really quite garish
Never mind what the Bible says; it’s without mammon that people perish
Art is art when an artist has found it,
Take a blank wall, put a frame around it
Don’t waste time trying to master your craft
Just set sail on the ocean of art with your ego as your only life raft
Christmas, 1996
(for Becca)
The kid, they say, was born in a manger.
Frankly, I have my doubts.
The boy, they say, astonished the scholars.
Frankly, I have my doubts.
The man, they say, had a huge midlife crisis
and decided that he was God’s son.
The prophet, they say, could walk upon water.
Frankly, I have my doubts.
The messiah, they say, could bring back the dead.
Frankly, I have my doubts.
The man, they say, offers a model
of humility, kindness and love.
The Lord, they say, could multiply fishes.
Frankly, I have my doubts.
His blood, they say, has washed away sin.
Frankly, I have my doubts.
The man, they say, was a poor carpenter
who laid down his life for a cause.
The anointed, they say, can offer salvation.
Frankly, I have my doubts.
The Son, they say, is living today.
Frankly, I have my doubts.
Jesus, they say, gave good for ill.
Frankly, this I believe.
Jesus, they say, said heaven’s within us.
Frankly, this I believe.
Jesus, I say, resonates meaning,
and he never intended to lie.
Looks
I.
I never mastered the art
Of not giving a shit,
Although
I had the look
Down fucking pat.
Always behind the sneer,
a thought that last remark
might have gone too far.
The look distracted any pain.
II.
They all had looks, the rebels did:
James Dean, Elvis and Marlon Brando
Looks flowing from their leather coats
Up through their pompadours
Oozing “fuck you” like Brylcreem
My look showed nothing of their cool
Disdain, perhaps,
A sense of
Looking down
From on high
To keep
From feeling low.
That look
Of mine
Could wither friends,
Poison neighbors
And strangle lovers.
And yet,
That look of mine
Was never mine at all.
It just kept people from being mine.
III.
Caring is creepy,
So I crust myself in a coating of
“I don’t give a fuck”
but the caring keeps showing through.
Icarus Revisited (for BH)
You know my story—or think you do.
Out of love or whatever, and feathers and wax
My dad made wings to fly me away
From Crete and back to the mainland
And on to the cover of* the agora’ gossip rags.
We dreamed of the headline: Father, Son Defeat Gravity; Marry Twin Courtesans
A dream, of course, denied existence. You know my flight.
Dad never found a wife
And I’m still married to the Mediterranean.
That is the story, or a part of it
Stories have points (or did in my time)
And the moral here? You’ve been taught:
I flew too high out of pride, the wax melted and I died.
But think.
Think about.
About this,
This:
If a father gives a boy the tools of his own destruction
Why is this my story
Instead of my bastard father’s?
Drowning in the Fountain of Eternal Life (for EW)
A psychiatric ward, that’s where I was. I think.
And when I think I get confused
Because of the kicks.
I’d do anything for kicks. I think I remember.
And when I remember I forget what happened.
Heroin-Kicks. Prison-No kicks. Release—Time for kicks.
But this time to my head. Two guys. Four boots. One six-month coma.
And brain damage.
It’s zero degrees. Tomorrow will be twice as cold.
And confusion.
My mission is to refuse the mission. Do I accept?
And forgetting.
I’ve tried to forget the pain. I don’t remember if I have.
Anyway, a psych ward was what I think I wanted to say.
That’s where I first met Keith. He’s my friend. I think.
I don’t remember what happened to those pills. I really don’t.
But I don’t remember forgetting, either.
The cops say they know.
It’s confusing.
I do know: Keith brings my money to the jail to buy me cups of soup.
He’s my friend. And that soup is good.
Bloom Where You’re Planted; Rot Where You’ve Buried Yourself (for JT)
I’ve never left prison
Planning a crime of
Passion
Necessity
Stupidity.
Each time, I’m aiming for straight time.
I’ve never left prison
Intending to
Drink (at least not the way I want to drink)
Steal (unless I really, really want it)
Lie (except when the truth would hurt me).
Always, I’ve changed and I’m going to do better.
I’ve never left prison
Dreaming of
Working hard for a month
Getting a thirty-day chip
Throwing those away for a six-pack and a toothless girl.
But I always do.
It’s always the same—It’s going to be different.
But I never am.
I’ve never left prison.
Zu gescheit ist dumm (Too Clever is Stupid.)
The poet’s sultry voice nudges the novelist awake. What he’s called poetry is vertical prose.
The poet creates an ecosystem, shining images virally playing off each other, infecting the listener.
The novelist’s poems are flowerpots with a single bloom, a hose hidden to soak the reader’s face.
Each poem is a set-up for a gag.
“Walking on water wasn’t built in a day.”
“If I don’t see you in the future, I’ll see you in the pasture.”
“In a city of a million souls, she was known as the town whore.”
“Quaker erotica: Be still and let the Spirit send you dirty thoughts.”
+ + +
The Bulgarian music ice-picks my ears
The singer wearing, I suppose, a traditional white dress
Piped with red and green.
“I suppose” because my ignorance
of Bulgarian tradition
is near limitless.
The tune,
A dance number in 5/8 time
Is punctuated by her shriek,
A fifteenth-century wail lacking tonal center.
The song is, I believe,
an ode to the courage of resistance fighters
During Bulgaria’s five century long occupation
By a variety of powers
Bent on spoiling the spoils of war
Or, perhaps, an account of the marriage
Of a hedgehog to a rabbit.
I know no Bulgarian
Although it sounds a good language
To organize either a war or a wedding.
Beside me, a heroically ugly man,
Nods his head without connection to the music.
His face,
A bag of melted caramels
Pummeled by a golf shoe,
Breaks into a smile
When the hedgehog,
After saying, “I do,”
is killed as a collaborator.
+ + +
The novelist constructs gags,
Searches for one-liners
And spray paints humor
On the miniature he’s created.
Just don’t call it a poem.
Call it a dispatch from clever-clever land.
The novelist will never sit at the grown-up table.
He’ll bide his time
Trying to capture the poet’s attention
By putting beans up his nose.
A Gift
“I am an alcoholic.
My name is Legion”
Familiar unheard stories flow
Laughter at self-destruction
Nods at idiocy
Winces at the few instances
Of fruit-fly lived joy.
Jung, or somebody emerged from his pool,
Spoke of doppelgängers–our spirit doubles.
In a meeting, that spirit, that ghost, that phantom
Of our Thirst
Hovers over each head.
Unable to clasp spirits,
We grab hands
And chant
The rhythms of an old prayer
Made new by repetition
- X. X.
Tonight, my friend,
Engaged in the gymnastics of love,
Let that ghost of each of our best
–and worst–
Selves
Become
Momentarily
A true monogänger.
Beauty is a Guillotine . . . as heavy, as light
He stares, discreetly he hopes,
For his heart is thrombotic. His face a Buddhist statue,
At the side of her face
In the harsh office light
And wonders where desire resides.
Is it in the tempestuous whirlpool eyes?
Or is it the mouth?
Of course, the mind.
Desire, decanted in secret,
Stored in an emerald carafe
To be drunk not often,
But always in the deepest of draughts.
He gazes a while longer
Turning the possibilities over in his mind,
Like so many coins at a Turkish bazaar,
Then shakes his head
And watches the snowflakes swirl, then settle down on
The sleepy town
Of a cut-glass ornament at his grandmother’s house.
+ + +
Love that is incomprehensible
Does not cease to exist
+ + +
Lying awake nights, staring at the back of his eyelids
He wonders why. Just why.
She’s beautiful, he thinks,
And witty, bright, charming
And all those other words
Made meaningless by repetition
And it amazes him she’s attracted.
He is so unworthy . . . not, however, incapable of being made worty.
I am not a Whore
I.
Are you sure we’re alone?
Completely alone?
No eavesdroppers? No bugs?
God, I was kidding! This is hard for me. (and it wasn’t then
–an example of distancing through foreshadowing. I’ll hide
in the darkness away from the slow-motion explosion.)
But I digress. Before beginning
1978. A lifetime ago. Not my lifetime,
but, for instance, Jesus’. Thirty-three years old
and they got him for practicing
magic without a magician
while today we have
magicians and no magic.
But I digress.
Approaching this thing takes stealth. Like mice
Sneaking up to bell a cat.
1978. Hitchhiking. Home on leave. Army.
Me—New Hampshire. Girlfriend—Connecticut
Her name was Kristen. Nanzig, France the spring before.
Sophomore. Wesleyan University.
Way outta my league except for my
Proletariat status. Working class hero.
I can tell I’ve gotten off track.
Let me begin again.
1978, Hitchhiking in love and on the interstate. To see Kris.
And give her tickets to the Springsteen show from the night before.
Darkness Tour. She was a Vivaldi fan, so Bruce tickets
A sign of my class, which is to say lower-middle.
A car pulled over, late-model. Nice car. Driver dressed well.
Man in his 50s, scarf thrown sportily over his shoulder.
(No, this isn’t that kind of story—it’s much worse—not a gay Penthouse Forum tale (“I never thought this would happen to me! . . . Unzip, slurp, slurp). I’d been hit on by a lot of guys before and after, in 10 states and three countries. I knew the casual hand to my knee, the shy smile with just-too-long eye contact, the casual mention of being horny.)
(Once, outside Indianapolis, I’d gone to a guy’s house so he could change his clothes. We smoked a lot of weed and, while I was listening to Deep Purple, the guy came out of his bedroom, naked, erect and with industrial vibrators strapped to his hands.
I knew how to talk
my way out of the situation,
offending no one
and getting out with my pecker untouched.
Call it a gift of the hitchhiker.
Goddamn. Three steps on the journey and I’m so far off course
The goal has hidden itself behind me.
Scary, this. And that. That goal.
Back to the beginning.
Does this show
I am not a whore?
1978. The man in the car. Joseph, I’ll call him, and that may well have been his name.
Abort. Start over.
In list fashion
II.
1. Nothing happened.
2. Something happened.
3. A man touched me.
4. I let a man touch me.
5. I planned to let a man touch me.
6. I went to a place where I planned to let a man touch me.
7. I went to the apartment of a man I thought might touch me.
8. I went to the bedroom of a man I knew wanted to touch me.
9. I took off my clothes for a physical examination in the bedroom of a man I knew wanted to touch me.
10. I lay down naked across two beds in the bedroom of a man I knew wanted to touch me, my cock hanging straight down only because of gravity.
11.
Before I get to 25, I’ll lose my goddamned voice and tear this building down.
III.
Let me begin again.
More softly.
Shhh.
As a story
For children
Of a lesser god:
Once upon a time, a boy was hitchhiking, something you must never ever do, and he was picked up by a man, a doctor. The boy was a fast runner, the fastest in his town, one of the fastest in his state. The boy had joined the army when he was a big boy and now he only ran two miles a day, first thing in the morning. The boy was stationed far away, across the ocean, but he loved a girl in his home land. He had come home to visit the girl.
The doctor asked to watch the boy run. They went to a park and the boy ran. He ran fast. The doctor watched, and liked what he saw. The doctor told the boy he was the doctor for the army track team, and that he could get the boy on the team. The boy was happy. The boy would be with the girl he loved.
The doctor drove the boy to the college the girl went to, and the doctor told the boy he wanted to see him in two days for an examination at the doctor’s office. The boy was happy. The girl was happy. The doctor was a motherfucking liar who was out to destroy the boy and leave him a shell of himself, so that he’d spend the next 35 years sleeping with women he often didn’t care about and trying to erase the goddamned doctor from his memory.
IV.
Hold on, there, Tiger. The tone has changed. Let’s go back.
Tell me what happened. Just what happened. No feelings. No assessment. Just what happened.
I wanted to be on the team. I wanted to run track for the army and be with Kristen. Joseph the doctor picked me up, and we went to a VA Hospital parking lot. Joseph the doctor said the lot was full, and we could go to his home for the examination.
I knew what was happening. I wanted the fruit. I wanted the fruit so goddamned bad.
We got there. I knew it was all bullshit—the doctor, the track team, the promise—but I couldn’t know that. I had to sort-of-believe.
I stripped naked and lay across the space between two twin beds. The doctor got down on his knees and started stroking me. I didn’t get hard.
“Don’t you get an erection from stimulation?” he asked.
“With a girl,” I said.
“Stimulation is stimulation,” he said. “There’s something wrong with you. Get hard. Get hard! Think about a girl, but get hard, you little faggot!”
I laughed. God help me I laughed.
“What are you laughing at, faggot?” he hissed.
I said nothing.
Irony is a hard lesson to learn with your pants down,
V.
The truth. The nub. The point. The touchstone?
I don’t know
Tiny White Box--Thoughts on Life, Death, Recovery, and Other Mundane Topics 