THE POETRY CHALLENGE
Who writes THE BEST POETRY
in America today?
(c) copyright 2007, David B. Axelrod
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THE POETRY CHALLENGE Who writes THE BEST POETRY in America today?
(c) copyright 2007, David B. Axelrod |
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MYTHS, DREAMS AND DANCES But Oh Baby, What We Do to Each Other
Four years old and wakeful infrequently enough for us to know there's something wrong, and yet you cannot put it into words; whine, complain of in- specific pains, bugs in your bed or stomach aches, beg for our company and receive our threats until it hits us that you too have had some vision-of empty rooms or crowds of callous people, of nebulous losses, worlds without reason. As we sit with you, swallowing our parental pride, we see the madness die in your fluttering, half- closing eyes and we are saved again by the lie of momentary comfort. After you fall asleep, we two lie sleepless. Americans are sentimental about the Tsar, feel bad he got it in the basement and for all the peasants and their potatoes, wasn't it nice be- fore the revolution? Royalty is not so good but riches are and the Tsar was rich as hell (he must have been doing something well). Americans, when they are tired of fighting and/or bored, enjoy a book with pictures of the Tsar, pity the bullet holes like dimples in his head and whisper, "Better dead than red." Ù FOURTH OF JULY IN ROCKY POINT The beach ignites with Galliano and hot dogs at the Annual 4th of July Picnic, spread out on barbecue hot sands. The kids tear up and down the bluffs doing a year's erosion with every kick and shove. The evening brings a sour- mouthed brass band with cherry bomb percussion. A ring of flame-spitting red flares illuminates the dumb faced clans united in a midnight Star Spangled Banner. In the morning only the trash stands at attention. I open drawers like Hawk- shaw the detective, careful not to leave a clue that I've been there, searching for who you really are: I note the tranquil- lizers in your medicine chest, the hair dye for your wife, a pint of kaopectate. But in the bureau you give yourselves away, not in the bank book tucked in the back (four hundred sixty dollars left of all you've ever earned) but in the diary your wife has hidden in her underwear, the days checked off infrequently when you have been successful; and in the nightstand drawer, left beneath the gap-toothed comb and dirty tissues, a dozen prophylactics safe in their hygienic seals. I close the door on the same tragedies I know, sorry to see you like myself-promise to say something erotic to your wife to turn her on for you when you two return. Change come to us in yours of Salvation Army bags of clothes discarded, retired and replaced, contributing our memories before they fade or die. Rags that wipe the window dry, the underwear slipped slowly off to make desire real-- now the wind washing away the lint is our lubricant. Time reclothes us knitting patterns, counting stitches, casting a styleless garment without sleeves. I kiss your belly button bursting out like a silver dollar for your sixth month. Sleek and fat you sway before me, lure me to or conjugal bed to use each other gently before the final lay-off. I kiss your tights, see eyes staring at me from deep inside, that wink to say we are captured and must pay ransom for twenty years before we're free. You are too sexy to be pregnant. I am too young to be a father. We are too sure we need each other to let go. Intro- ducing that most remarkable of creatures, the human heart! seat of all emotions, center of all bodily communi- cations, sending signals auricular, ventricular, eighty times each minute every hour every day for eighty years or more, or less. Watch it wiggle, watch it bend and bounce with every blow it's dealt, never ceasing, barking, beating, banging out at life be- fore your very eyes. Step right up the next show's a- bout to . . . stop. Ù 7:05 AND MR. RISLEY GETS THE BANANAS The old Irishman who fell, alone, amid his tumblers can't remember, for the life of him how, when he came to, he was not in his house but hospitalized, or how, by God, he cut his knee (at 83, drinking off four ounces of straight whiskey). He asks for anything to see him through-something fruity like the ladies drink. Gets only a banana. "Sweet Jesus, you'd think that I was two," he cries, dreaming of his charcoal-filtered ryes. 7:05 p.m., the sun is barely in the sky; the old man is craving for a drink before he dies but the nurse is bound to save him. (The New York Times reports the average American will watch TV 9 years out of his or her life.) After the 3rd year the feeling was mutual: we needed each other; you setting quietly with a glow on, me, seated warm by your side. I paid the bills, kept regular hours, liked to see you turned on. You never said you were addictive. Only, after 5 years, you broke down. "It was you that failed," I cried into your unforgiving face. I pictured you when you were young-your faded features bright again. I got you fixed up and you seemed to promise not to leave me. But even a comfortable habit has to end. Your funeral was rated fair for the number of viewers and the early hour it was on. I've tried it with others since, but in their image I only see the ghost of you. I'm dreadfully alone. The breast came back to question her on weekends as if asking for a date, demanding what could have caused her to grow so strange. "A cancer," was the only answer she could muster, "and I'm glad you're gone!" But lying pillowed, late and dark, as other parts debated their revolt, she felt a hollowness around her heart and wondered if the breast might not be right. Better stay whole than slowly dragged apart. When several organs celebrated their independence with a fireworks of tissues, she solemnly declared and issued, "No further surgery. Subsequently, she remarried to the breast in a quiet ceremony. (The specialist insisted that he might have saved her.) (A Macarthur air controller describing the pilot of a small plane lost off Fire Island, Feb., 1972: "He was calm almost until the end when he began asking for his wife.") Asleep with the automatic pilot on after an hour in the air, darker when you awoke than ever the sea had seemed and infinitely cold and empty. You talked to the tower, asked for coordinates, believed in landings. Small planes on overland routes don't carry floats; you didn't have a flashlight; you thought of home and where you'd left it. A light to aim at-a ship-six thousand feet of altitude to average over fifteen miles of ocean. Your calculations broke your faith, ringing in the air con- troller's ears and couldn't they do something to preserve the human voice, phone-patch you to your wife? Instead, a klaxon signal of the crash, the hiss of water. (For Sandra.) As she grows old, wide-cheeked, hair streaked, lips once wet and wide kiss only filter cigarettes and her passions become plain print dresses, educator glasses, grade-school gestures. She is the lover of nursery school children who feared to have a child. As she grows old, wide-checked, and hair streaked, lips once wet with passion kiss only filter cigarettes. Idealist's idealist now in checkered prints, conservative, accredited, the leader of a nursery who feared to have a child. Revolutionary lover of freedom and a dozen men, now mother to three dozen kids a day. As she grew older, tired-checked, habituated to forgetting what she had done; where all their touches drove her wild, when all her fears cried out, she had destroyed her one-chance child, ripped from her young affairs to leave herself alone and in some way atone: the maker and the made, as if some debt were paid. (Being the history of the making
of 1. The Old World Potato Fat, scarved women, their woolen bags bulging, bosoms large as the potatoes they feed their hungry kids. 2. First-Generation American Potato Bubba's bulbas, cooked with prunes: one helping cleans out all the tubes. 3. The Kids' Potatoes Scrawny fired, immersed in oil, salted to a fault, $1.25 a helping; drive in, pick for pieces at the bottom of the bag. Get laid. 4. Middle America's Favorite Home fries, redeeming an otherwise undistinguished diner; cut and cooked just right despite the flaccid eggs. 5. The Triumph of American Technology Instant mashed potatoes. (With thanks to South African Doctor Barnard who performed one of the first successful heart transplants.) "My boy, they are like children," Dr. Blaiberg said (and flashed an ivory cap job), forgetting his own Warsaw dead: "You have to treat them so, You know, my boy, they really love us as we care for them, providing civilized restaurants. We make them comfortable." Then, "Excuse me, I feel faint." The dentist, opening his mouth in pain; and red-faced Dr. Blaiberg, at the men's club for a chat (always a bit too fat) slouch din his chair like a victim of his own sweet gas. Blaiberg in the hospital: the surgeon who examined him (a courtesy, and in exchange for future dentistry) said he would not be free of his heart failures unless- to do his part-he would let the surgeon fit him with a better heart. "So be it," said the sage and somber Dr. Blaiberg. The team attending him, all white, and sterilized, extracted from the nearest human a healthy heart, left gaping the ribs of a Mulatto whose head was crushed. Using find German instruments and with a Swiss precision movement, the English surgeon stitched his patient up. "Now feeling fine," quoth Blaiberg drinking beer, and not a bit surprised to hear who was his donor. "After all, we treat them well, and why should they not be grateful?" "I am," the Mulatto purred. We need each other to holler at or slowly drive each other mad, repeating lists of things to do and all we want: Like you, ticking the piano off to an irregular Anna Magdalena Bach; getting minusculely better every day you drive me from the house to let you practice. Or me, practicing poems on the IBM, impossible to speak to before, during or when I'm done. We need what we want: We want a single day the garbage cans empty themselves, groceries are shopped for automatically. We want the earnings of Rockefeller uncorrupted; a list of things that reds like poetry; the care- free life; sex without responsibility; the way to live with grace and art; a graceful way to die. We need each other. (For Richard and Jerrold.) At 32 and single, a man can be spinster-like for all his balling. For my friend who keeps a cat named Mutzy (Hebrew: dear) keeps changing beard and hair clean-cut one day or stubbled, stays the same and single, has lost a dozen women, let another dozen go untasted. He loses his young form to sweets but never eats of marriage pie. At 32, he dreams of abstract beauty and climaxes. Late at night he passes 40, rubs his fat behind and calls his Mutzy dear of company, but somehow stays intent on his old ways. Ù BUT OH, BABY, WHAT WE DO TO EACH OTHER The Hair cast visited a prison and sang "Let the sun shine in" to an audience of burnt-out, toothless women, Cast members contorted with the beat while others pointed fingers pleading for a sing-along. Excited inmates straddled the stage with bumps and grinds, but one young girl danced slowly like an all-nigh waitress before the jukebox, dreaming of stardom. The Hair cast cameras got their publicity shots and left, but oh, baby, what we do to each other.
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