Imitation of Myself
By William Dennis
I pick up the pen and I’m home– not the duplex and half-
acre yard, trudging distance to all of my schools and the train to my college– I pick up the pen; I’m at home with the pen where the bittersweet chokes the chokecherry put up as the window display of late summer instead of the doorway and glittering sidewalk of Delhi in May or September’s slate rain on the Hook of Bombay, where indifferent migrations track rain in their web-footed stride. I’m at home at some cost to the half- way forgotten and half-misremembered dear woman, whose glittering shadow casts over my shoulder the warmth of her train, even if, at the moment, I’ve broached a contemplative window to pasts by Jules Verne or those Proustian futures my pen sheds its ink in the name of, the optimist effort to pen up with memory self-knowledge and scribbler’s endeavor, where rain and the knave with his heart up his sleeve break not in by the window to get more fantastic their features on mirrors I half fear to glance in, half hope to discover true self in– to train the dry eye of discovery on watery creation there glittering..., glittering. Once we’d envisioned our children’s eyes glittering love’s understandings, I wrote for adoptions to happen– from Bíhar’s hill, Móndar, a boy who blew in with the rain; and a daughter kept safe in Kanpúr by four Pope’s better half and her helpers, who look back at us over time through this window, for now was their fiction as then is our legend. This window of ink opens forwards and back to discover through glittering panes of awakening, first: what I hoped and then, half- way known knowledge I seem to grasp only as dripped from a pen. With a drip yet again, lining out with a dash of black rain my track backwards from coupling to tender the length of the train of effects I’m required caboose to – the youngster who’d train to become a grandfather by perching long years in the window pitched high in the roof of his parents against life’s cold rain and dark past, where his eye took in nothing except by quick glittering motions of jostle and blot from a hard-bitten pen, which must trace out beginnings to justify life’s second half. While although at it jottery best the pen sketches this window half open, the grip rests my hand from that anxiously glittering reign of snatched rest and cramped effort that tracks my life’s train. |
The Poet’s ComplaintThere is a poet with my name– at least
my last name is the same one he writes under. Take the name, by Jove, but leave my thunder! Such skeletons as we bring to our feast look more alike than did their shaping beast, alas, and all old bones can break forth wonder, gripped with passions poets labor under, nor have feeling’s sorts and kinds increased. A poet using my first name released works, setting me and my best lines asunder: come to plumb, I find most tracts long leased, while at my back flies plagiaristic blunder. Her poets then, my muse prefers deceased, for published bards on live persist to dun her. |
Workshopping the OdeAnd Mr. Shelly has an ode, I see;
long time, no see. I’d like to see more praise poems written; easy, modern cynicism often over-looks the simple virtues, sensory awareness of our world and values and traditions found in form. The ode takes more from attitude than form, and so this terza rima that we see here, neither modern, nor quite Dante’s world, exhibits cleverness one wants to praise, except it seems to flaunt distracting virtues; entire rhyme evokes my cynicism. And though it’s such a modern sin, a schism has developed (jesting!) right where form and metrical device most flaunt their virtues; modern ears crave naturalness, you see– unleavened loaves of heightened prose, we praise because to us they smack of our own world. We all want something warmer from the world than Darwin offers with cold cynicism, a more responsive world that we may praise, a world, the parts of which take human form; so we should ask, is this ourselves we see pathetically projected in false virtues? A young man’s vice, here yoked with old men’s virtues, paints too bright a picture of the world. “...dead thoughts...like whither’d leaves...,” yes, I can see; the ending though, wants salt of cynicism– that second Spring, which no man can perform, nice fantasy, but not one one should praise. But still, there’s much about this work to praise; its muscular syntax disguises virtues better showcased by another form, one less reflective..., I mean..., of an idealized world. Write with ideals, re-write with cynicism; here, free verse is what I’d like to see. Praise and the world praises with you, you see; not lumping cynicism with the virtues– but still, who dares describe the world through form? |
Anniversary with Cats at Red House InnStiff with the many years of being married,
worn with the ways we never thought to go, we creaked among the wicker, slightly harried, until conjecture, stropping to and fro, grew feet and fur and nose and tail and tarried. These cats have learned to take the guests for granted –different avatars of God’s great love, as regular as mice, but distant-minded, waiting, both enchanting and enchanted, for cats--to whom we reach down from above, cats who forgive that gods must be reminded. Where three-legg’d Clute demands we scratch his chin or Gingham Girl that our lap let her in, we bend and un-bend best at Red House Inn. |
Aesop’s BathHerrick has it Aesop had a bath
which leached old age away– a tea of years poured out so often all the stones wore round and white beneath the flood of Attic salt, till now, around the Peloponnesian plain, scarce one sharp stone remains above the ground. And though not even stones dare stand their ground, think back to when we used to share a bath– we climbed out wrinkled, both, who climbed in plain, un-shriveling the less the more our years. Just pray such tutelary gods as salt our stew leave seasoning to go around. Dry seasons for our love have come around; we each got out and pushed when hard aground, aware a sailor daily earns his salt and nothing comes of fishing in the bath. Just cast your eye upon our wake of years, not wide, but long as luck can well explain. The Stalinistic hand of age works plain enough, cutting corners till we’re round and grateful for the tithe left of our years because it might have put us in the ground. Now, scratchy towels and a shower-bath will sweat us for our tallow and our salt. Though life with love is not one long assault, you wouldn’t know, the way that I complain. We lost two days on pantiles, once, in Bath; our second year, we checked: the world was round, and Occident and Orient swung ’round disoriented heads and dirty ears. If youth were wealth, then here we bought with years a small black thing, all wrinkled in its salt, some stone with gall to call us native ground, most pungent produce of our fruiting plain; it takes us both to move this weight around– the sort of thing dissolved in Aesop’s bath. Lot’s wife spent years as pure and bitter salt around the two ruined cities of the plain, until she ground out tears to fill her bath. |
Not So HotNot so hot, how I’m feelin’,
you could say, is not so hot. You can hear my bearings squealin’, but, truth to tell, I’m not so hot. You could say my heater’s workin’– you exaggerate a lot. I think my fuel-oil pump is shirkin’ while the cold outside, it’s not. Babe, there’s not much wood to chop, but, shucks, why heat an empty pot? Hey, girl, I might just close up shop ‘cause business lately’s not so hot. Not so hot now, no steam pressure– a leaky boiler’s what I’ve got. Some knocking pipes would be a pleasure– this radiator’s not too hot. Come on, darling, grease my bearin’s, pump some oil and fill my pot. Please give my pipes a thorough bangin’, ‘cause without you, love, I’m not so hot. |
TasteListen up,
chocolate and vanilla’s not all there is these days– there’s strawberry, there’s tutti-fruitti-mixed-fruit cup. You hate the thought, though you don’t tell us, of candy-bars-and-cookie-crumbs-and-cherry. And one’s good, one’s just all right of brown and white. Pull up your socks– rectangular blocks of dolce once served the simple needs of early men, whose tastes ran square to basic stocks derived from local plants and algae. Complexities of music were for Heaven, all novelties of smell and taste for Hell. C’mon, c’mon, it simply couldn’t last and water-ice was always in the gutter, spumoni spooning on the lawn, with pale, green kulfi coming fast; for ice-cream après egg-roll, Tea, the waiters mutter and alien abductions mean introductions. Don’t purse your lips at toffy-crunch-espresso, convinced it breaks some fundamental law to mix, and spike the servers’ tips. Anxiety of influence? I guess so, but since good luck has let you draw within my sticky reach, here, taste my peach. |
Light(Song for Two Voices)
Blisters light the outbound strokes, which buoy my dark, mad sea:
Piercing gauds, a penetrating jewelry memory wears. The future is dark, we have not suffered there–
Light and suffering are everywhere– all past would be forgetfulness, except more than the widest lens would dare collect, for pain, a light the moths of memory accept, so kindness lets the memory select which blinds the owl that perches in its glare. by sometimes squinting fondly, not to stare. Love blooms at night, a fragrance on the air, Oh, purse your lips, that each moth gets his share, hate is a bile, fluent on the tongue, hear anger shout where sorrow would have sung; so volatile is joy, so– ever young, as spirits dry from nets the heart has flung, but pain, to memory’s eye, grows almost fair. disrobe the eye and come to darkness bare. How fortunate the man whose lowland shows The eye is drawn to bright spots, as it knows such villages of light at each formation suffering is beauty in creation– to rival, but for narrowness, night sky– I hear you cross the roof tops– love, it’s I, as steep the way, so clear behind it grows, the chimney sweep, who dies for where he goes, perhaps, in time, to shape a constellation– whose tears bloom distant lights to conflagration, in this there must be few more blessed than I. and hopes great foolish things of when I die. |
To the Five ReligionsClaire Dennis
October 7, 1914 - February 8, 2002 Say to the Buddhists she was of our clay
who always are reborn to lovely dust and suffer willingly, as is best. Say to the Hindus she was a branching twig afloat on seas of family, effect and cause, the youngest children of whose children lap the Alps and Rockies and the Eastern Ghats; gulf to gulf, the tide grows salt. Say to the Moslems that to keep her modest even while her heart clenched proud, she needed no illumination-leaved instruction. Where she bowed her head was lawful worship, facing always toward the heart’s own Kaaba. Allah, who knows more, sent none to teach her better or to hide her from the world. Say to the Hebrews she was also chosen who chose in return, making sacrament of daily labor, a sacredness of days, who struck no measure off for sacrifice, who told tales of paradise called youth and holy lands from which our people fled. Say to the Christians she was never saved, who was never wholly lost to good; to Jesus, when he came in rag-tag guises, she served his meal and sewed his button for him, who stayed out from before him, who met his eye. Say to the five religions: no bright heaven is called for in reward, no sweet re-birth, no smelting hell to melt away the dross, as if her journey were not really over when she reached the end of life and stopped. |
Einstein’s Brain Is MissingEven in life, he was absent-minded,
appearing in dinner-suits and polished shoes sans socks–or was that simple, inner-directed indifference, or was that orneriness? But that’s not all–his daughter was missing, too. Not entirely missing, she was found repeatedly– too often– volunteering herself over the decades, various species of weed in a life’s suburban lawn. So we see that not just his brain was subject to the odd, unpredictable impertinence. His correspondent, Freud, suggested artists must be men who seek to attract women by means of their art. Surely, we include physics among the arts. Imagine, if you can, E=MC², the pick-up line. They say it worked at the time. It has never worked for this reporter. His will left his brain to science; science kept it in a jar of formaldehyde. And now it’s missing. And JFK’s brain is missing, too. What is happening to the brains of our best and brightest, now, amid the modal morons? If anyone out there should believe she has seen either of these, make no attempt to contact the original owner– rather, contact this writer, if not immediately (more a quantum-type concept), at least quickly, relativistically quickly. |
for Jim MarinellAugust 19, 1946 – September 11, 2001
Who will make sense of my great nonsense, now that you are gone? A man can be patient, yet not be kind;
how summer blessed the worm with fruit this year, barbarous in bounty; strong men find their kindness contains patience and comes dear. A man who knows his mind need not be kind; and those who are, those famine-few, we prize; and when he will attend to know our mind, such a man is something more than wise. Fewer than the patient, the kind few and knowing are uncommon, beyond rare; all qualities together lost in you, cold earth hurls daily at us to compare. Yet..., yet, there always comes the harvest: your cultivating hand cut like the rest. East rubble burns and stubble to the west; here hearts catch flame at bonfires of the best. How pagan still, the heart of man will dare to fellow-fill a boat with souls for you of those whom sudden-surfeit light and air embarked anew, the old adventure through. Prometheus befriended man against dark skies, and bore a beak within of much like kind. Though you put on men’s hearts of every size, no seat for your compassion could they find. In vanity, we, still left struggling here, not knowing what has been designed, dare to make our gifts, who have just fear, and leave a last, small page for you to find. |
Take a Grandparent to School Day, 2052I seen a lot; I seen it all, well, more
than you, young fellahs. I was your age fifty years ago, before we’d got pollution whipped. What looked to be in store was what the Bible calls sin’s wage - if hydrocarbon’s sin, bless hydrogen. This birth control, you learn about in school and church, was everyone’s salvation. The Holy Father’s edict, bless his soul, made zero population growth the rule. Though I’m not of that congregation, he lives a saintly life – but, oh, his wife! I recollect, back then, mankind was split up into lots of hostile races. Xenophobic Allergy Effect to Male Sex Hormones was what they called what caused it – one ill a single pill erases. With strangers so endearing, they’re disappearing. Can you believe, just half as many folk as now came close to melting down both poles, the ozone layer was a sieve and species went extinct each day? No joke! They used to keep H-bombs around, not like we do today, I’m proud to say. So, anyway, I hope you learned from us what not to do, and to do, too, because it took us centuries, they say, to get to unum from e pluribus. And study hard; I promise you, despite a few advances, life’s full of chances. |
Talkin’ to Young-StuffOh, babe,
I’d reach on down behind the chair’s upholstery and grab me half-a-handful there from loose two-bits I always had around and set them free to pay my own and anyone’s full share, and not come down on my heels all day till every promise see one good lick square. You do that way? You couldn’t wear me out back then; you wouldn’t want to try. Heck, no one walked in front where I’d sashay– and never doubt, that anyone hooked arms when I come by would find himself down half the street before he’d think to shout I got to sigh. And what was neat was, you could sing the songs– I must still know the words to fifty, and all with melody, besides a beat that just belongs. Oh, yeah, I think that old stuff sure is nifty. And when my baby’d break my heart, I’d write my own sad songs; they’re in the fifty. The sweetest part. I’d work three jobs sometimes– the money came, the money went; some people squeeze so hard, right from the start, they tarnish dimes. It wasn’t what I earned or what I spent, it’s who I found to spend my nights. Gal, those were some fine times. I bet you’re right. |
Any man’s heart’s blood and weeping, so
with mine commingled, whose naked sweat were pressed on mine, back to back in ringed imbroglio, might freely lay his hand on my heart’s purse. So why might your small hand not feel within my chest, whose snatching care out-reached such brinks of jagged risk as makes of love a sin, to rummage for a pearl beneath mail’s links? If you were any fellow man at all, I’d shared a famous drought and famine with, I’d leap in answer to the faintest call I’d hungered by across a desert’s width. But you came first, recall, the lock-pick picked; no man at all, with love the trickster tricked. |
Backstage“We wrestle our own angels, but can only watch our children’s struggles.”
Dr. Dan Gotlieb, on NPR, 23 July, 2001 My own many angels make me skip,
as if, unknown, a music caused the dip that masks the limp brought by a smitten thigh; they think I love the dance and just fear stairs. Where pity’s coal gleams lonely at a sigh, my home-light warns off others from my cares. There, by that light in others– you– I know whom else the inner Alps serve stumbling blocks, that I might help to point a halting toe and make a little laughter of sow’s hocks. Could anyone who loved, like Genghis Khan, perambulate a sickbed with raised arms, to wear the ill or take disease upon, least grief would lie in love that chose most harm. To cool your blood, let sugars burn my veins; one good green eye for your brown blank; I wish like prayer to slip my joints for yours; what gain to be divorced and childless, could we switch. I’d offer up my flesh to all abuse that spared you revolutions on the wheel for victims and their victimizer’s use; or in your place, in any cell, I’d kneel. And lightened vanity’s best use, self-praise, it makes a narrow shield to spare another. The wise ones know, and struggle with their days –however grieved, none wrestles for his brother. That trouble is a three-legg’d dog is true; and life’s its mate that gets along on two. |
Dreamwork“My God, you’ll fall!”
You’d rolled to where, down half the cellar stairs, the drop-off to the side was sheer; the sharpness of my call– brief balusters, just as I leap; the fear of crushing you restrains my fall as, wrapped in quilts, you realize all my fear– head first, you fall. Fault, sin, guilt, blame– if I had only leapt, not stopped to scream, how could your mother have allowed.... How dare you play this game? O hell’s worst steam! In hope love weaves a shroud, and earns, through loss, reflected fame. Where all men trust works as one careless team, I lead the crowd. It’s psychodrama! The precious youth I’m losing is my own; the careless risks, I took myself; I notice my dilemma late, I own. No, fearing for your health, you blame yourself, who blames my mamma. I was escaping, me, you think you own, your braver self. |
The Dozensyou hear? Okay, alright!
Now, this is what we’re gonna do... Okay, I know just what you’re gonna say– you heard it all, you know what’s right. You’re right. I know. That’s true. No lie, no way! So, listen here, alright? You’re right, I’m wrong, but, hey, you gotta see my side. I know this is a real shot in the rear. You know I meant well all along; I won’t pretend to hide behind no tear. Just let me talk! You owe me that, at least. You get the last word anyhow and I already know you’re gonna walk. some fool if I don’t know that now. My skinny butt’s at fault, but life’s no feast. C’m’on, come on, only God’s perfect! This I know you know you know, know what I mean? You know it never gone to get no worse. I’m sure that you suspect that we got nothin’ left to lose, so when’s it gonna dawn– I need respect? |
A Marriage of SortsWith some sorts out of sorts, it still takes all sorts, but my sort;
The sort stuck to the bottom sorts ill with the sweet, fresh sort. I tell you, I am less like him you hate and him you love Than I am like you, who has a soul of the same greedy sort. Your eyes are a green-backed mirror, but any color serves; I look for my reflection as a bigger, better sort. With you my other half, I average no colder than most; Fire and ice, our moist, warm love stands with a foot in each sort. Saints do not matter, nor great sinners very much at all. The average guides the population; see me as that sort. All my life I have fought under the banner of your rights. Often I defeat myself, being the devious sort. Your guess, peering into my dark, guides you along the path; Whereas I need to take the hand of a guide of some sort. |
From the HaggadahHad you but swayed that moment in the framing door,
not smiled glad welcome..., as none since and none before, it would have been enough. If you went just to hear the music played back then, and liked it not enough to go with me again, still, it would have been enough. Had you but pressed the leaf-sized firmness of your hand, and held the softness of your length as contraband, it would have been enough. If you made one day, jutting on its rock, seem bright and had not given all your days to mine, and nights, still, it would have been enough. Had you given but your hand to me as wife and not adopted children, whom your heart gave life, it would have been enough. If you drew salty sons across the tossing waters and no sweetness in the vessel of three daughters, still, it would have been enough. Had you owned half of every stroke of thong and blade and not held tighter to me at the wounds they made, it would have been enough. If you had once been young with me, bud and its bee, and we had never thought of winter, you and me, still, it would have been enough. But all these things you chose as if there were no choice– and left the thinnest of demurring thanks to voice: It would have been enough; still, it would have been enough. |
Membership– after Talcott Parsons
“I am large; I contain multitudes.” Whitman Stout, garrulous, drunken, upright and church-going,
my Welsh forbears made cautious introduction to my phlegm-hawking German ancestors, who parted their hair down the middle, before they met the Italian end of a line of descent, just off a boat from the farm, spitting fennel seed, and glad to be indoors, who are my kin. Marriage brought me restless blood of re-refugee Czech, who went and took up as land agents for the gentrification– of all blessed places, wouldn’t you know– among sullen lads of the Five Counties, and crossed themselves with bandy-legged German shop-folk first chance they got. Adoption budded scions to my stock from thorny parts of Hindustan which never spoke, where harder means were found. There springs a cherished grandchild, Filipino by half, whose heartbeat moves my pulse. Rent by friendly fire, family waves a larger flag than nation. And I turn my gaze on racial cleansers with the special censure saved for kin. |
Perennial Crownsfor Nancy
Perennial crowns run more to seed with time;
come see with me how we have filled our bed with upright glories, forbs and weaving thyme, where sprawling error lies like joy misled. The powder-post within the beam beneath the roof won’t speed his ticking, left unwatched, nor worry cool your kettle’s purling grief, which troubled, oat-sown waters might bear porridge. Walk out with me beyond our weedy patch in evening’s cool and dawdling light to where the pumpkin lays its burden down in thatch and runs on toward the fairy ring that’s there. I’d like to see a step you can do still and show to you some earth we might yet till. |
The Canyon DownG.M.H.
Beneath my load I startled straight in morning
shadow, catching winter’s fist of feathers break to baffles, falcon blue to fox and tangerine, against the summer bluff. All my marrow crept to greet that fifing. Taken by the throat, I choked on knowing there, as fresh-bled bits, a crumpled chick was taking all it might of brooding love. More steep! More peregrine a one than I, though I may trot before my kite through all the shoes I ever own, once spread his heart in hiding, master at the word to gales of apprehension, sickle-bird..., accipiter in horizon’s perfect-pleated circle – brustling bells, hand-wrung to their last worth. But Chevalier, whose stylite heart stayed hiding, whose mastery rebuffed the world, lacked word to jess his scoundrel merlin soul to any hand of perch. Love not justified he spurned, caught coal, to take by defalcation. Sharp wing cut the bird-strung wall, and off! past ken, not yearn, of downy aspiration, left to raise itself, just nourished, parched for that shared damp which, missing, makes a falcon stoop or makes a man self-cruel. Cool coal,I snugged my jingling kit the closer, clinging down the canyon wall. |
Evening Trigonometry for Nancy
We two points define a base drawn dark,
a Deccan sediment laid down between your constellating towers and my park, on which geometers erect a screen: an older Pocono’s round, ranging truncates, pyramids for modern ice too wry; like hope, memory extrapolates old angles from those bright spots in our sky. Mathematical reflection draws out longer shadows from our plinths than right demands triangles cast, once glacier thaws, out-faced, out-foxed, have left us to our night. Day’s plain horizons, smiling, reject what evening’s trigonometries suspect. |
Too Warm to SleepToo warm to sleep, I lie awake and watch
the tangled world unroll toward what must be a spendthrift's end of willful poverty; the sex-mad, buried clutching at his crotch, prepared for after-life's prolonged debauch; the paranoid's small joy in company. This boom-and-bust is weedy strategy, with Eden's balance always ours to botch. We now alive may well be last to see the world before it warms that fatal notch which sets anoxic microbes finally free. It need not be, but man is made of such a blend of wisdom and perversity, it's only just that I'm not sleeping much. |