comments on "inevitable spraying", version 2

It is, of course, hard to say whether this is the same poem as version 1. I say, "of course," not just because every line has been changed but because the original was an improvisation, the starting point the first line, "two words said in conjunction", the second line an act of bravado, "like an inevitable spraying of vigor", the third line ready to concede failure, "lost all hope of underlying success", the fourth line finally stepping away from the set-up and working on the "project". Need I tell you that the sexual shenanigans that follow are purely imaginary?

In making a new version I started with the lines that seemed to me most interesting in an assonance/alliteration/word mash/non-meaning sort of way, "disarming qualities of imprecise / calculation where quantum medication" ... I eliminated "quantum" after I decided it was too faddish a word, like "surreal" used by people when they want to use a fancier word than "weird". But I continue to like "disarming qualities of imprecise calculation"; as the poem's new set up, it declares the forthcoming to be ingratiatingly vague. Then "calculation" turned into "figurement", which isn't in my dictionary (though "disfigurement" is), a word which suggests the figures of numbers & persons (& guesses?) ... whether the very next word redirects one from a possible reading to impossible reading or whether one could continue trying let's just say I recommend not straining but enjoying the way "all whom're comers" rolls about in the mouth and the following rapid fragments of image.

Many words recur from version 1. But version 1 has become less the foundation for the poem (as it asserts itself in version 2) but a box of objects that can be propped in new poses.

I'm made a bit uncomfortable by "fish" in "the indistinct fusion of celebration, / breath, and fish" as I've heard "fish" used derogatorily among gay men to refer to the smell of the vagina. Is the word objectionable in this context?

"inevitable spraying", version 2

disarming qualities of imprecise
figurement whence medication unmended
concerns all whom’re comers, quarters
hind and head, and the spinning
of the silver coquettes on a long trust
breached occasionally by a dazzle
of fluke or the tipping of smoked glass
on a titter of nose, the disguise as
see-thru as a dogma-lacquered taboo, thin as
the hopes inevitable in a dish, success genially
underlying Project W’s tender rigging,
some jury, some jerry, jugs swung on bristly ropes,
and the pricks of firm black rubber
stood up to tongues, all wet attention,
brutal vigor, the hair trail from her navel
to the indistinct fusion of celebration,
breath, and fish, a left-leaning bother
all told, a nakedness projected on a
conjoined word, the men and their
called bets under a flowered alarm

Oops

Phone rang this morning a little after nine. Kent got it.

Where's Glenn?

Huh? But I thought on Saturday I didn't show up until 2 o'clock. That I worked from 2 to 6.

Nine o'clock.

Oh. So I had it backwards. It's 9 to 1.

Dang.

I hopped in the shower, gobbled a bowl of cereal, then Kent zipped me to the library in the Jeep. I was an hour late so stayed till 2.

Turned out okay, right?

Yeah. Turned out okay.

migraine day

Laurel endured a 3-day migraine this week. When I said I, too, get migraines. She asked what triggers them.

This is what I posted in her comments:

"It's rare for mine to go for more than one day ... Used to be I could say I'd never had one last more than one day ... alas, 's no longer the case.

My migraines may be very powerful tension headaches tho they come with furious nausea and sensitivity to light & sound & smell & touch ... & probably taste, but with the nausea eating's not happening anyway ... When I had a checkup last year my new doctor looked at my back, dropped a word I didn't quite catch, and said that would be why I have so many headaches. What does that word mean? I asked ... Said he, Curved back.

For more'n ten years now I've been working through yoga & weights to stretch my spine and loosen my tight tight muscles/tendons/everything. Big progress. But it brings on migraines. If I've gotten in a fierce batch of stretches I can almost feel the reactive tightening -- and in the morning I can have a migraine that incapacitates me for the day. Lots of great progress, really. Range I never thought I'd have. ... And I've paid for it all along the way. Strange to think pain so brutal all I want to do is drive nails into my head is price worth paying. But I figure I'm going to have the migraines anyway; might as well suffer toward improvement than merely suffer in decline."

Last night I did some stretches. I wouldn't have have called them "a fierce batch," really. It was sitting. To stretch my hips so when I can sit cross-legged on the floor for an extended period. Sitting cross-legged on the floor can get very tiring, even painful. So I do some stretches I picked up in yoga class and these stretches have improved my sitting. I also did down-dog, which is named after the stretch a dog does when it sticks its butt in the air and lengthens its spine down to the outstretched forepaws. Anything else? Oh yeah. A very brief boat pose. That one is probably the one that puts the most stress on my upper back. You sit on the floor, legs straight out in front and lean back, then you lift your legs so you're balancing in a V-shape on your butt.

Nothing seemed painful last night. I had to do a lot of head and shoulder shaking to integrate the moves. I lay down. I felt okay.

This morning I woke with a migraine. I took medicine for it, hoping I could head it off before it became incapacitating. Didn't quite work. Finally I had to call work and say I wouldn't be able to make it in. It's mid-afternoon now and my head is feeling kind of light and wobbly, my neck stiff, and my body generally fragile. But I'm hungy! A nice change from the nausea that had me hunched over the toilet at 8 a.m.

kisses

Until Sundy I never would have believed I could ask a cat to kiss me. We'd been playing with one of Kent's weaving reeds. I was lying on my belly on the floor, propping myself up on my elbows and Sundy was poking at the reed where it lay between us. I said, "Give me a kiss." I made kissy sounds with my lips. Kent was watching and started giving Sundy lines, "I'm a cat. You're embarrassing me."

Sundy arched his back, rubbing against the couch. He dipped his head. "Kiss kiss," I said, my lips softly popping. Finally Sundy lowered his face to my mouth and sniffed. I felt the soft hairs around his mouth on my lips and his breath. That counts as a kiss. He's done it uninvited. But it feels extra special when I ask and he obliges.

comments on "inevitable spraying", version 1

At a party in SF Sunday I was making a new acquaintance. Rachel, her name was. Her husband was sitting to my left and he & I each had a plate of food in his lap. When David offered to fetch her her own plate Rachel insisted she wasn't hungry. The three of us had shared a few of those what-do-you-do generalities ... David is an architect, Rachel works in PR. I work at the library. Rachel & David were related to the party's hosts by marriage, I think, one of them the sibling of the host's sister's husband, something like that. Rachel had decided to mingle a bit and was rising from her chair when I had an inkling her face, which had seemed familiar in a she looks like someone I know but isn't sort of way, actually was a face I knew, somehow. Abruptly I said, "Rachel, what's your last name?" "Dacus," she said. That would be Rachel Dacus the poet. So I dropped my full name and she recognized it from our online poetry interactions. And she sat back down and we talked shop. Poetry, that is.

Among other things we talked about revision and workshopping and I said I will now & then post a poem on LoveSettlement from one of my old notebooks. Then I will comment on it and post revisions, which I will comment on, noting what changes I like, what still isn't working, hopes for improvements, dismay over lack of progress. I haven't done that in awhile. Last night I started reading through Tales of the Blue & Yellow Sun / Work Journal, Part Two, a notebook from 1982 & 1984 which I've mined for other poems I've revised here. Apropos to what Rachel said yesterday about poems that would detract from one's carefully-cultivated reputation, poems which should be burned in order to prevent their being posthumously discovered, I paged past "I walk a night of solitary lights. / Follow the candles as they bob, / the lines singing Ave Maria." (from the "Ave Maria" sequence in Disney's Fantasia?) and "Ghosts close-up / reveal their intentions / unlike politicians on talk shows / who hide behind polyester ties when cornered" ... These weren't offering the potential I was looking for. As I said to Rachel, however, when I was a baby poet I had to give myself permission to try things, just to write, to commit failure to the permanence of the bound notebook.

When I decide on a poem to post here I want a poem that has interesting things going on in it. I also want to have no idea or no clear idea how those interesting things could join up to make an interesting whole. I want the process to be a challenge. I don't want to pick a poem that with a tweak or two would be finished. I want something to look back at me with some defiance, to resist when I try to push it one way or another.

"Inevitable spraying" -- the title is merely a phrase from the poem -- was written in July or August 1984.

"inevitable spraying"

Two words said in conjunction
like an inevitable spraying of vigor
lost all hope of underlying success
while the men of project W
performed fellatio on the other wives’
three dildoes encountered for
men of distinction alarming
disarming qualities of imprecise
calculation where quantum medication
is concerned in all quarters
and related conquettries.
The breach of trust in infilitrated
relationships she viewed from afar
like thinly disguised sunglasses
seldom removes taboos unknown
to Mr. Squid’s third left lung
Unbother Mrs. Torrid’s left pet
called King Fisher who telltales
four-wished call beckoners
Unassumed by revealing naked
celebrationists.

cat battles

Sundy and Sutra are brothers. They like wrassling with each other. They charge across the house, one in pursuit of the other. One lunges from behind the couch or out from under the table when the other is passing.

Sutra likes to lie on his back, his big fluffy belly making him look extra big, while Sundy pounces on him from above. Sometimes Sutra makes small mao sounds, usually when Sundy seems to be on top or in control. Sundy is always silent. Neither ever hisses.

I was watching one of these tussles this morning ... the two cats were facing each other, sitting up. Each was resting on a left forepaw so he could raise his right. Whap! went Sundy's paw on Sutra's face. Swat! went Sutra's paw on Sundy's face. Whap! Swat! Whap! Swat!

I had to laugh, which made Sutra look at me and broke up that particular interaction.

would've made a nice picture

Sundy poked his nose into the bathroom. He must've come from poking around under the porch. The whiskers that jut up above his eyes had acquired some dust/dead moss/leaves, some sort of lightweight detritus affixed to the whisker by spiderweb and nicely symmetrical, the longest whisker over each eye so enhanced. He looked like he had antennas.

it is so raining

I ate lunch at a cafe and walking home it rained so hard my socks got wet through my shoes. Fortunately the clothes were done drying so I could take out my floppy wool socks and put them on. That felt good. It is cold here.

I read in one of last year's New Yorkers that with the rising water due to global warming the Netherlands are (is?) going to get flooded really bad. Most of the county is lower than sea level and they can't just keep building higher dikes. I hope Michael's baby saves the world when he grows up. Save Holland, baby!

My APE

The weather report has rain all this week. Rain! Damn. It's only sprinkled so far today. Dunno 'f them clouds currently blotching up my view are going to let loose or just drift by.

Yesterday I went to APE, the Alternative Press Expo. Over at DIR I listed what I bought.

Being as I was there by myself it was nice running into a few familiar faces. Tara, the head of North Branch ... Rory, the owner of Comic Relief ... Jennifer Joseph, publisher of Manic D Press ... and chatting briefly with some of the creators at their booths.

In past years I've always had trouble carrying around my booty because these folks aren't retailers, really, so they don't have a big stock of bags to drop the wares into. So I brought along a plastic grocery bag (plastic cuz of the rain), but when I grabbed it from the cache at home I thought, well, since the vendors don't tend to have bags I could bring some extras to offer them. So I brought a wad. Whenever I bought something I asked if the vendor "could use any bags, because I brought extra." "You're providing a service," said Justin Hall. It felt a little goofy but in a cute way.

I gave one to Tara when she said she'd had to make two trips to her car to offload her purchases.

I forgot all about the panels and just wandered the hall until exhaustion set in.

Mark States

Mark States has transformed himself from mild-mannered coffeeshop poet of the 90s to fierce slam poet of the 00s. He's still a skinny little dude and he doesn't look scary even with the hood of his sweatshirt pulled low on his forehead, his wet eyes gleaming in their cave.

But Mark's connected with some rough personal material -- growing up on the mean streets, getting beat up, drugs in the family, being so poor he had to skip meals, etc -- and he's upped his performance chops. He's got most of his pieces memorized and he even makes some illustrative gestures. That upthrust fist still doesn't look like it's going to sock it to the Man but it does help keep your attention.

Poets just don't put the work into performance that they oughta. I don't. I muse to myself about doing a few slams, enough to see what happens to my presentation, to my work. Enough to see if I connect with the crowd.

Mark's example sure demonstrates how distinct the coffeeshop is from the slam, genrewise. Mark says he's got a good chance of making this year's Berkeley Slam Team. Judging by his performance at last night's Poetry & Pizza I can believe it. Mark's put in the work.

Info Desk Blogging

I'm happily ensconced now at the Claremont Branch. Not that things haven't gone wrong or weird. Our computers have gone down a couple times, which is harried making. But the problems are different problems than the ones in Technical Services, so, you know, the novelty is good.

Right now I'm seated at the Information Desk where I answer reference questions. While sitting here I glance around. Nearby are racks of uncataloged paperbacks. By "uncataloged" I mean you can't search the library's catalog and find these paperbacks listed; it's purely a browsing collection. I remember glancing at one of the books and thinking, "Lethem. He's supposed to be good. Maybe I'll check that one out."

About fifteen minutes ago a patron came to the desk -- my first reference question of the day -- and asked if I could help him find a book. The catalog says the book is on the shelf, but he went to the shelf and it wasn't there. The title? "Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem" ... My eyes probably dilated. I turned my head to the left and stared for a beat at "Motherless Brooklyn", the very book I'd been considering taking home. "Would you like a paperback copy?" I said. The patron shrugged. I walked over to the paperback rack and lifted "Motherless Brooklyn" from its place and handed it to him.

I can see clearly the titles of 12 or 13 books on the paperback racks. The coincidence was so odd I almost felt like I'd been set up.

weather

ah. some blue sky. blue sky good.

how hard

How hard is it to write something no one else has ever written anywhere? It sounds like a bit of a challenge, doesn't it? Am I so original that I can concoct a phrase that no one ever anywhere has rigged up just that way, the words in an order perfectly comprehensible but as yet utterly unattempted? I don't know.

Maybe it's easy. Really easy.

What with the recent noise about the Washington Post hiring a rightwinger to be their "conversative voice" in the blogosphere, a blogger who turned out to be a serial plagiarist, I became curious again about how often we (let's say, I) say the same shit as ever'body else.

So I went to my featured poems page and started grabbing phrases that it seemed unlikely anybody else would say. I would put these phrases into Google in quotes and Google would give me back one page. Mine. For instance:

"its distaste for his wrinkled kidneys"

"a thumb you want to plumb him with"

"the mechanical lung and a bathing cutie"

...

Well then. I could try other phrases, phrases that were sure to have been said by others, phrases I maybe even stole from others.

What about:

"does it matter whether john is walking"

"Go and when you come back let me know."

"even the grass bowed."

...

Hm. It's not until I choose really generic language that I start coming up with other pages.

"The picture of three men"

"many roads cross"

"It's okay, he whispers"

... in all three of these searches I found my own poems easily (only for "many roads cross" did I have to scan past the first page of results).

4/12 Update: Funny. When you click on the links above, this blog entry shows up alongside the original poem. Sometimes the blog outranks the poem.

tow

The Berkeley Police are good at getting their car.

Yesterday Kent went to hop in his car and toodle off to work. Only there was a blockage. Someone had parked across the driveway. Every so often someone does this.

We always wonder what's going on with them. It's pretty easy to tell you've parked across a driveway. The red paint on the curb is worn murky. And the curb is kinda low anyway. But the weeds are getting high in the dirt strip between the sidewalk and the curb so it's obvious when the weeds stop and the driveway begins. I mean, it's obvious to us. Must be obvious to most people because impacted as parking gets around here there's seldom a car parked across the driveway.

Then there's yesterday morning. Kent came in, "Where's the police number?" Groggily, still abed, I said, "Look in the phone book." Kent found the nonemergency number, dialed, read the dispatcher the car's make and license.

This was 8:15 or 8:30. By 9 the towtruck was rumbling away with its prey. Unless you're in a big hurry a half hour to 45 minutes isn't a traumatic inconvenience. The police officers are always friendly, though calling a tow truck must seem kind of a dumb duty. And the towtruck operators are efficient and courteous. I suppose the city gets a bit of change off the business.

When last I came home to find a car parked across the drive I was walking and Kent hadn't yet driven in. I made the call and the process took about 30-40 minutes. It's a good service. When Kent got home that evening I told him, "Ten minutes earlier and you wouldn't have been able to get in the driveway."

I remember Mom would get irked by people parking across her drive. I don't remember her calling the police to have any cars removed. But I do remember on Apple Blossom weekend in Sebastopol parking would get bad so Mom would haul sawhorses out to the curb and set them up in front of the drive, red rags hanging off them, and a NO PARKING sign. Nobody ever moved the sawhorses in order to park there.

Back to yesterday. Kent is gone. It's 9:20. I'm lying in bed. Still feeling groggy from a thrashy sort of night (man, this bug I caught has been a bear) and I hear a heavy knocking on the front door. I lie there wondering about getting up to answer. Voices. Can't make out them out, 'cept for something about "parking" ... Uh huh. Parking. Pound pound pound goes the caller. I lie there in the dim room trying to think what getting involved in this story would do for me. Would I offer them use of our phone to call the towing company? If my car had disappeared I figure I'd call the police. "My car is missing!" They'd happily tell me, as Kent says, "the good guys got it." There's a grocery store a two minute walk from here; there are pay phones there. But doesn't everybody have a cell phone these days?

And would they be upset, would they want to tell me their story? Would they be upset with me? What's with the angry pounding? I didn't get up. They went away.

Sure, once in awhile you make a dumb mistake. It was obvious you shouldn't have. But you did. Didn't stop Kent & me from musing over it last night. When did they realize they'd parked in a driveway? When they got back and their car was missing? Oh. Look. A driveway. When we were parked there we couldn't see it.

Each time I think yeah they knew but they were in a hurry. Park there two minutes, ten tops, rush to the store or to the friend's house and be right back. Surely I couldn't be so unlucky as to have my car towed in that time. The car yesterday was sitting there at least an hour before the owners returned.

We used to think, you know, if they left a note on their dashboard what house they were visiting we could go roust 'em to move their damn car. They'd get an earful but save the impound lot charges. But then we discovered how efficient the city towing service is.

a second job

Man, being sick is hard work!

I'm feeling better today, 'spect I'll go to work tomorrow. All eight hours? Oh. Yeah. Sure. I think I'll be able to remain upright.

I went out for lunch. Had a pizza & a small coffee at Bel Forno, a cafe around the corner that's pleasant to hang out in. They tend to have the classical or light jazz station playing, both of which are (except for commercials) easy to tune out. The food is good and not too expensive. And there are windows all around. The view is mostly streets and parking lots (Long's, Safeway) but the natural light is the best.

I wrote & read. Finished Bitter Fame, the biography of Sylvia Plath. I've begun reading Plath's Collected. Rather dark, isn't she? I added another line to my one-line-a-day poem. The restriction is amusing me. Sometimes the line I write today is pretty much the line I would have written yesterday but mostly it isn't.

Should I burn a new mix CD? Maybe I ought to hold off till we buy a new stack of recordable CDs, as we're quite low.

title swap

I sent Steve Mueske three prospective poem titles. He sent me three.

These are three I sent him:

Crossing the Water with My Rubber Ducky
The Monument to the Empty-faced Girl
Night is the Mother of Bad Laughter

These are the three Steve sent me:

Weapons of Minutiae
Light Fuse and Get Away
This Morning, Over

... I've been mulling the last of those three. Have written versions in my head. This is what I've committed to the page:


This Morning, Over


We see clouds. We see clouds, over.

Yes, clouds. What we see are clouds, over.

Can we describe them? No. They are white, over.

They are frequently white. Sometimes they are not white, over.

Yes, sometimes they are walking, over.

Yes, I said, they are walking. We cannot see the earth, over.

Are we on the shoulders of clouds? How could we tell that? over

I understand. Repeat, I understand, over.

We don’t know how far we have to go. Do you have any idea where we are? over

Repeat, do you have any fix on our location? Can you make a guess? over

We see clouds, yes. That’s what we see, over.

ugh

A scratchy throat, fever coming on yesterday. So I've been home all day today ... I've already called in sick for tomorrow. It's been ugly stormy out. If it'd been cozy sunny I probably would've taken a book out to the lawn chair in the back yard. Instead I've been trying to keep warm. Is cold!

what to say

You don't have anything to say, right? So you look at the space available for a castle or a hut and you think, I could speak any sort of structure into existence, then walk inside and look around, spy on the people who live there, sniff what's cooking on the stove, scoop up the cat and rub its head, then lie down on the bed and wait for him or her or them or it -- who lives in this house -- to step in and lie down. Lie right down beside.

But ... neh ... that's kinda creepy. Kinda creepy, yeh? Walking into an imaginary house, poking around, ending up on the bed where something unmentionable could happen.

Something you wouldn't want to talk about if you could, tongue all tied up with a leather strap and buckles or numb with novacaine, the room spinning like a vinyl single at 12 rpm. There are all sorts of things not to talk about.

It's better that way. Holding your tongue. Submissive tongue. Yours a language with no word for that anyway, no word for what you don't want to say so can't think, can't think about anyway, a notion you can't entertain because you have no place to do entertaining. The revolution is the turning of the room. Just when you thought the door was available, a door you could get to if you could get off the bed, a door you step through to begin the journey, the journey ready to take you to the new land, the land where words for what you can't say are waiting ready on shelves in haberdasheries and drugstores.

Just when you thought you saw it, already open a crack, the door has rotated away and all you face is wall. Maybe there's a picture on the wall. But what of?