Viste-Ross: 2012

30.

This can opener doesn't work.

I've tried adjusting the antenna every which way.

I've tried taping the threads with Teflon.

I've tried augmenting the maple pegs with stainless steel screws & mahogany caps.

I even added an additional tablespoon of cream of tartar.

Still, its only output is silence & a field of blue;

The damn thing simply won't turn over.

I took it to two jewelers, a hardware store & a Batteries Plus franchise;

None of them could even get the back off

(let alone being able to tell me how deep to dig the hole, or how often to water it.)

I guess I'll have to resort to the tried-and-true:

A plunger, then a snake, then anhydrous sulfuric acid.

I just have to remember be careful.

This is three-phase I'm dealing with here.

If I pound too hard, I could get a 480 volt handshake.

Oh well. I have to hurry & get it fixed.

I need it to barbeque the sushi for dinner.

Some friends are coming over to discuss

Darwin's Black Box¹ and Genesis.²

¹ Behe 1996

² God -4004

31.

The black hole on the other side of the door–

A hole through a ten-by-ten-inch, wire-reinforced window-pane–

A pane meant to keep someone from slamming into someone on the other side

when it's unlocked;

but to keep someone on the other side when it's locked–

And let me be metaphorically clear, right off:

This black hole isn't Death (or Birth);

it's not the Unknown (or Regret)

it's not Loss (or Gain) or Failure (or Success);

this hole isn't Pain or Fear or Want or Ignorance

or the Future or the Past.–

The black hole on the other side of the door

–It's night; the office lights are mostly off;

the concrete slabs are cavernous & cool.–

The black hole on the other side of the door

–As we disassemble and move the last of the files & equipment,

as we move all this old stuff to a new place–

This black hole on the other side of this door

is silence within a great array of noise;

is a satisfying, specular void.

32.

I have thoughts; you have thoughts.

Let 's call them god;

We can share these god-ideas.

Three things: the earth, the air, the sea;

These things are god;

We're made of god, god 's what are.

All living creatures reproduce themselves.

Creation 's god;

The god-process allows that all live things endure.

I can think upon notions I've never had & can't explain.

God will be these notions;

They pass between us that we can know god.

I will die & yet I know things still will be.

God is continuation;

What I know can be known hence.

Much has happened long before my birth.

God is the sum of all that 's been;

God is that I am of our past.

I become uncomfortable –I guess I'm scared–

When I apprehend that I will cease;

The moments when I can ignore my end is god.

I suppose there 's a cognate for god in every human language.

That we're able to compare between us is god;

We can discuss god & other things.

All sane persons want to reach outside themselves.

God is communion;

We know god as us.

God is our image.

God is our hope;

God is our reason for waking up each day.

Not a guy, nor a spirit, nor any thing (nor no thing),

God is an opinion, a desire;

It is as real as if it really were.

34.

International Peace

I finished bagging my groceries

& was pushing my cart out to my little 4x4.

(A four-by-four? No, I don't think it's testosterone poisoning.

I spent my youth & formative years

pushing cars out of the snow;

I'm too old for that now.)

A young Somali couple walked by me.

Her, two paces behind him.

She was telling him something.

She repeated the same thing at least twice.

I have absolutely no idea what she was saying

–I'm embarrassingly monolingual–

except that, from the expression on his face:

He'd heard it before.

He knew she was right.

& he knew he'd hear it again.

There ARE some things that practically transcend culture.

The world would be more peaceful

if we paid more attention

to those of us that are women.

38.

A Compact

When listening, with Richard Leppert¹,

To Renèe Fleming²

Singing Sergei Rachmaninov's³ Vocalise⁴,

I knew everything I knew was only a moment;

I knew nothing I knew would ever surpass

Understanding that someone⁵ else⁶

Heard what I heard.

We can only be alone.

It's good we can imagine it otherwise.

¹a scholar

²a singer

³a composer

⁴a song

⁵anyone I consider

⁶ everything other than me

39.

Little machines smaller than a pocket calculator

or a Zippo lighter

or an ink well

or a mango pit

or a baby's foot–

People plug these devices

into the earholes in their head

to listen to absent people

& ignore present people

by filling their mind

with talk or play or song.

Consider a vast room –say a warehouse floor–

where the din & drudge of the task at hand

can be filtered out

by people, by plugging themselves

into separate little machines

together. Together they are

mostly unaware of place, of each other.

I bought an MP3 player today;

I wanted to be a part of my community.

41.

Though feral cats have taken food from a plastic spoon I held

And though imperious toms have only growled a little when I petted them as they ate

And though mostly-wild queens have come to our back door when they're pregnant & hungry

And though everyone in a couple of extended families of outside cats nuzzles & purrs

At Louise when she's feeding them –but won't let me near them when I'm not;

I still never really accepted that they only liked us –initially at least–

Because we gave them food.

Until I noticed my friends at work & me

Eating free pizza at a company party

As we bunched about the pizza boxes until they were empty

And laughed & grinned & told stories

And wiped & licked the tomato sauce from our lips & chins.

42.

Sentence

As we walked down the hallway with but one bare, unlit incandescent lightbulb hanging on two zinc wires with only remnants of cracked, brown-black insulation, in the center of the ceiling with palm sized, thick, rubbery flakes of oil-based, lead-filled paint attached by cob webs & sticky dust to the yellow-gray, raw plaster beneath, with almost no noise from outside the collapsing corridor except an occasional rusty honk or collision, some swearing, a bit of sporadic gunfire, then silence, time collapsed away from us like the out-leaning walls that surrounded, with a tentative, nervous hesitation and almost longing, until each of our steps anticipated a finish, a completion, a resolution, yet harkened recursively to the step before, and that to the step before that, until all our walking became a wanting and until all our wanting became a needing, and until all our needing became a beginning that ended in nonsense and violence and easy confusion, until all we had left was each other or at least what we thought was each other, for in the near-darkness of that uneasy passageway, the first of us saw little and anticipated much, and the last of us saw only a back before them, and remembered what they could, and only those in the middle were seen and could see, or so they thought, because they could only assume someone behind them saw them and knew they saw them, though there were our relentless steps inside the silence, so we could all infer, or we could each infer while assuming all the others inferred also, that we weren't alone, that we were making progress down the hallway together and that, at some point in some time in some place that lay before us we'd step out of this conduit to an ending and emerge somewhere into some place in a moment that was the beginning of a less worn & confusing & just less old –and maybe safer, but perhaps much less safe also– surrounding that could give us some hope, or even just some need to continue wondering as we walked down the hallway.

50. When you're made unemployed

watched pots do boil.

hand-rehemmed pants are satisfying; so are new ones. Making things and buying things fill the days (but you feel empty.)

you complete stuff you've been putting off for years (but you feel incomplete.)

it's easier to work yourself into feeling good than to work yourself into feeling bad (but it's easier to think yourself into feeling bad than to think yourself into feeling good.)

you understand you were curt & rude after you've been curt & rude (but at the time you seemed reasonable —to you.)

some things can be irritating: people you live with, neighbors, children, politicians & actors, drivers, bicyclists, pedestrians, clerks & customers, people you don't live with, computers & telephones, anything digital, anything mechanical, pets, weeds, rocks, dirt....

no matter how hard you genuinely recognize some things will inevitably become, when they do, you'll think and feel (in startled shock and disorientation) "Shit, this is hard."

Understanding this doesn't help.

forgiveness might help, but so might revenge.

you'll likely get through it. 'til then, focus helps; but so does food.

careful, or you'll get broke

and fat.