Several blog exchanges over the past few weeks seem to have sparked this one.
ALTER EGO
So this rival blogger eviscerates
my candid assessment of a certain
poseur gris whose late-life memoir
mentions me, but confuses me
with another drunk student poet
babbling Yeats in the bottle-strewn
corner of an almost famous dive
on South Dubuque Street, Iowa City.
How, I ask, could I let it go? How
was I to know the poser’s my rival’s
brother, who lost his legs in a freak fall
from some tree house he’d years ago
climbed into with his lady love and six
Daffy Duck tabs of acid? My good name
was at stake (all right—my username),
so I posted a mention of the poser’s
back-then-well-known addiction
to certain sex acts involving a rope,
and failing to think things through
also mentioned his lady love by name,
the mother, it turns out, of his three
beloved children, who still make time
to visit him twice a month in prison.
How could I have known these saints
are my rival’s nephews and nieces?
My mistake. But does that make it right
for him to detail my own peccadilloes
online, using my legal name? Who
in the world does he think he is?
Not that it matters. What matters is—
I know where he lives. How often
I’ve stood on the midnight lawn
outside that craptacular bungalow
he blogs in, which stands, ironically,
just one block over and few doors
down from mine. Watching him tap
tap tapping in a cigarette haze, hunched
over a clutter of empty Red Bull cans,
I understood what had to be done.
On the kitchen windowsill I lined up
half a dozen fresh eggs. Two weeks
later they’re less than fresh: perfect
for a drive-by one of these nights,
one of these stifling summer nights
when Iowans leave their windows
open, though any wide-eyed cicada
might clack in. Maybe the neighbor’s
cat hops in with a mouse in its jaws,
or maybe there’s a sudden storm
of stinking egg grenades. I’ll shout
as I run for my idling car, “A terrible
beauty is born, asshole!” My hope
is he’ll suddenly become enlightened,
like a zen student the master slaps,
and realize how wrong old Auden was
when he wrote my rival’s favorite quote
(he trots it out in almost every post):
“Poetry makes nothing happen.”
I’m tickled you like it, Vassilis. I’ve tinkered with the ending, where it seemed the onwardness flagged a bit, looking for another drop of delirious elixir!
Exquisite poetic delirium–just the elixir needed–I’ll drink to that!