Further Adventures of K.
I’ve saddled an enormous cockroach,
and here I am
clattering across the desert grit
on his back—
his back a hard, glossy brown—
digging my spurs
into his armor now and then,
now and then
glancing back at the billowing cloud
his skinny feet
keep kicking up. The sun
is setting now,
making the floating dust a vast
smear of red
across the sierras. Now and then
I pat the creature’s
armored head, stroke his feelers.
“Good boy, Max,”
I croon. His answer never wavers:
“Like a dog.”
*
So many are like gulls thriving on garbage, on contagion. But we all suffer the same virus, low-grade in some, deadly for others. Fever, chills, visions, nightmares, secret negotiations; a grim diplomacy delivers child prostitutes to the tyrant, oil to the pipeline, gasoline to the corner station. Health has hell in it, wealth a vertical stone tunnel with a darkness at bottom, a cold water that has crept through buried layers of porous rock—a purified dream that could ease our thirst if the fracking hadn’t turned it into poison. A stranger’s eyes shine in our face in the mirror. Everyone was warned against waking the sleepwalkers, against breaking the glass (seven years bad luck). The gulls over the garbage heaps are crying out an old blues tune: “Down in the dumps.” A gorgeous woman—an actress, you imagine—appears in the mirror behind you. Her eyes are rheumy. She smiles faintly, half sad, half teasing. “I’d kiss you, but you don’t want what I’ve got.”
*
My poems may not be
profound, but I do strive
to make it new. Clichés
especially are where I put
my foot down—a diligence
I learned way back when
in creative writing school.
*
The pyramids are monuments to architects and slaves and the pride of tyrants whose arms shone with unguents. We do well to hold in mind the tang of tortured sweat, the stickiness of blood at the tips of the lash, the silence of the gods, wind moaning in the desert night. We imagine them a dream of history, but they are here and now. In the politico’s harangue we can hear the rustling of scarab beetles spilling from the sleeves of two-thousand-dollar suits in air-conditioned boardrooms. Impaled on the TransAmerica Tower the sunset bleeds into streets laid down over Ohlone graves and whets the edges of waves clashing under the Golden Gate. Our minds drag chains as they push the wheel of wealth around on its axle of skulls. Luckily there are pills we can take so the high-pitched creaking, which sounds so much like weeping, won’t keep us awake at night.
Thanks for the kind words, you two. I'm sometimes dubious about the Notebook, since I don't usually let anything into the world without letting it ripen in a desk drawer for a few months. It's fun, though—and if you can't disappoint your cyber-friends, who <i>could</i> you disappoint?
I second Vassilis here. It bears re-reading (and I did–twice!) Seriousness of subject and/or humor aside, the 'wording' itself is a pleasure. Shared notebook writings as an invitation to imagine, words that flow, entice, remind, resonate. Thanks, Joe.
Your notebook's a great way to start the weekend, Joe–serious and thought-provoking but not without its humor. I especially enjoyed your tongue-in-cheek rejection of cliches and the clever pun of the phrase "where I put/ my foot down"!