Wednesday, July 11, 2012

from Present Narratives


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. 


1 a scholar
2 a singer
3 a composer
4 a song
5 anyone 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.

Present Narratives 48.


                    48.

My mother
knit me a sweater
with big wooden buttons
about 45 years ago.
Finally –too ragged to wear–  I cut the buttons off
and kept them.
I bunched up the sweater
and stuffed it
inside a cardboard box
so some cats could stay warm
in the winter.
I'm amazed
at how carefully they arrange it,
with one sleeve
poking out of the hole
that serves as the entrance
to the box.
I pushed it back in a couple of times;
they always pulled it back out.
Just one sleeve.
Several litters of kittens
Have been born on that sweater.
My mother would have approved.
She liked cats.
The sweater is pretty encrusted & fragrant now.
I'll probably toss it
and replace it with a clean towel or something.
But not yet.