which is more frightening—an invisible death or a foreseen death? what i mean is, should we be afraid of vasari’s carnival 1511 where the black oxen drag the dead men through the streets singing “dead we are as you can see and dead we’ll see you one day be”? or should be frightened by plath’s blue-satin flemish lovers, foolish, deaf and blind to the carrion army surrounding them?
breugel’s dead are just; baudelaire’s glamorous. the difference between the two is that breugel’s bring the living into their ranks (for desertion is punishable by life) and baudelaire’s bride yearns for the admiration of the living. and therefore breugel’s dead enrapture and enchant while baudelaire’s merely mirror life. breugel’s dead…the living are guilty, the immortal unforgivable, for life is gluttony, lust, and greed, all to be surrendered in death. death is the truest democracy, the truest equality, as petrarch notes: where are their riches now, their honours? wretched is he who hopes in worldly things (but who does not do so?), and if, in the end, they are deceived, then this is just.
we all belong to death and to escape him is a sin, for in death we are equal, simple, true, still. he is a jealous master. yet shelley sees the dead not as tranquil but as feeble and roving, faded yet roaming. perhaps because death it is because death is extreme that we are drawn to it, as schiller notes, because though the transition is one from animation to immobility, it is a great transition nonetheless. any shocking change is a source of awe, because from vast dichotomies, differences, contrasts, we derive awe. perhaps it is because death is so much greater than ourselves, so full of power beyond our control, that we flock to it as we do to disaster or pain. or perhaps we are not meant to be tranquil beings, and, therefore, in bringing us into peace, death does us great violence. perhaps we are merely fascinated because of all these perhapses, because we cannot know or even theorize. death is not a thing, but the absence of a thing, of life, and we cannot imagine what fills that void.
when one life dies, it seems as if all life dies with it. middleton’s kaspar is gone, and with him goes the fairies, and the compasses, the pushcart wheels, the devil-shooer, lucid monograms in the stars: the imagination, direction and logic, energy, protection and good, wisdom. and yet the last line is one pitying not the world which has lost, but the man who has lost the world. for the divorce is painful for both, whomever left first.
in death, who has lost and who has gained? or does river flow on in circles, winding around and refilling its empty bed?
2.7.11
gideon, the armies flee from peace
a round red apple in halves, quarters, eighths—
god pares you down.
slice, sliver; shake, shiver,
three hundred men lapped from a stream.
he skins your heart,
but leaves the core.
three hundred cores,
thousands of seeds,
millions of voices,
torches of peace.
bury your seeds deep in the ground.
plant the shattered clay.
eat the fruit of victory’s shout,
of night’s retreat into the day.
god pares you down.
slice, sliver; shake, shiver,
three hundred men lapped from a stream.
he skins your heart,
but leaves the core.
three hundred cores,
thousands of seeds,
millions of voices,
torches of peace.
bury your seeds deep in the ground.
plant the shattered clay.
eat the fruit of victory’s shout,
of night’s retreat into the day.
september's hound
II.
a ring of mist,
grew like the five-o’clock shadow
around his mouth
on the brittle glass window pane,
edged in peeling emerald lattice
the hands of the wall clock stamped “what if”
onto the curve of his amber eyes
as he twisted in his fingers the soft cotton curtains
she sewed from the tablecloth her mother sent.
IV.
the rusted faucet runs and runs and runs and runs
and i don’t notice that i’ve stopped scrubbing at her favourite red pie plate
until she stops crying and reaches over to close the hissing tap.
the water is silent; the pipes are still
but my mind runs and runs and runs and runs
I.
to the black alley lined with sticky, crusted dumpsters
that held her in its raging arms
after three men spread her legs
and printed her back in its concrete.
a ring of mist,
grew like the five-o’clock shadow
around his mouth
on the brittle glass window pane,
edged in peeling emerald lattice
the hands of the wall clock stamped “what if”
onto the curve of his amber eyes
as he twisted in his fingers the soft cotton curtains
she sewed from the tablecloth her mother sent.
IV.
the rusted faucet runs and runs and runs and runs
and i don’t notice that i’ve stopped scrubbing at her favourite red pie plate
until she stops crying and reaches over to close the hissing tap.
the water is silent; the pipes are still
but my mind runs and runs and runs and runs
I.
to the black alley lined with sticky, crusted dumpsters
that held her in its raging arms
after three men spread her legs
and printed her back in its concrete.
number eight
Addiction holds you as strongly as death; addiction is akin to death yet is only a shadow of it, like listening to a motif rather than facing that which it represents; addiction is both fear and pleasure, like a requiem.
The quote on page 108 about death being the furthest the fashion photographers could go, from sex and tattoos and piercings to mortality, made me wonder what to expect next. A return to the days of falsities? The afterlife? The fantasy world? What is both worse and more realistic than death? Perhaps small things like clipping your toenails into a plastic waste bin or filling out a cheque for the electric bill or reading the programme at a lecture on health care or scraping the burnt bottom of a pan used to make an omelette that you forgot when you went to blow-dry your hair before work…and you work on the sales team at a store that sells…blow driers.
Another fabulous quote was on page 52: “People don’t associate you with the therapeutic function of exposing the shadow; they associate you with that shadow.” I wonder which is worse: for people to associate you with the shadow you attempt to bring to light, or for you to begin associating yourself with the shadow? No, I know which is worse, the latter is worse by far, for in contemplating yourself and the within, you are that with which you associate yourself. The shadow you are trying to bring to light surfaces into the day, but drags you into its core until the day is like night. Death devours those who reveal it; death is sun-shy and fierce.
Death is fiercest when cheapened, when commercialized, when commoditized, when marketed as the new chic. For it catches its purchasers unawares, for those who buy death are themselves sold, those who consume death are consumed in turn. When we forget death is fierce, he is fiercest.
There, I’ve gone and made him a he. Now why have I done that? Because I forget the power it has over me, and therefore he is he. And I also forget that he has no power over me, and therefore he is he.
But maybe he isn’t him…the terror that is death is in his genderlessness, in his facelessness, in his voicelessness, in his ambiguity, in his mask, in his lessness. Like the beautiful line written by Franz Wright about what Franz Wright carries up the walk: “Hugging that heavy black manuscript of blank texts.”
Living death is wanting to be invisible and wearing orange.
Living death is limbs not too heavy but to fragile to move.
Living death is a cage of camouflage with a broken lock.
The quote on page 108 about death being the furthest the fashion photographers could go, from sex and tattoos and piercings to mortality, made me wonder what to expect next. A return to the days of falsities? The afterlife? The fantasy world? What is both worse and more realistic than death? Perhaps small things like clipping your toenails into a plastic waste bin or filling out a cheque for the electric bill or reading the programme at a lecture on health care or scraping the burnt bottom of a pan used to make an omelette that you forgot when you went to blow-dry your hair before work…and you work on the sales team at a store that sells…blow driers.
Another fabulous quote was on page 52: “People don’t associate you with the therapeutic function of exposing the shadow; they associate you with that shadow.” I wonder which is worse: for people to associate you with the shadow you attempt to bring to light, or for you to begin associating yourself with the shadow? No, I know which is worse, the latter is worse by far, for in contemplating yourself and the within, you are that with which you associate yourself. The shadow you are trying to bring to light surfaces into the day, but drags you into its core until the day is like night. Death devours those who reveal it; death is sun-shy and fierce.
Death is fiercest when cheapened, when commercialized, when commoditized, when marketed as the new chic. For it catches its purchasers unawares, for those who buy death are themselves sold, those who consume death are consumed in turn. When we forget death is fierce, he is fiercest.
There, I’ve gone and made him a he. Now why have I done that? Because I forget the power it has over me, and therefore he is he. And I also forget that he has no power over me, and therefore he is he.
But maybe he isn’t him…the terror that is death is in his genderlessness, in his facelessness, in his voicelessness, in his ambiguity, in his mask, in his lessness. Like the beautiful line written by Franz Wright about what Franz Wright carries up the walk: “Hugging that heavy black manuscript of blank texts.”
Living death is wanting to be invisible and wearing orange.
Living death is limbs not too heavy but to fragile to move.
Living death is a cage of camouflage with a broken lock.
1.7.11
head start daycare
you are only three
but you think you are a man
roaring “fuck!” at pop-eyed teachers
in creased royal blue polo shirts
telling you to act your age.
last week you were a surgeon opening
the hollow cavity of a pumpkin
and when I asked you what you found inside,
you said either thanksgiving, leaves,
or cake, but you couldn’t be sure.
yesterday you were a librarian with a stroke
of genius
rearranging the books across the plywood shelves
by colour—
red on the top shelf, yellow in the middle, blue on the bottom.
this morning you were a growling dinosaur
sending children shrieking away from your scalpel-sharp
teeth and claws,
as khaki-slacked teachers
in creased foreheads
told you to stop acting your age.
today we glue ornaments to a construction-paper tree
and as you hang twelve or thirteen candy canes
on the same branch, you whisper
to me that you are actually a reindeer.
crumple-mouthed teachers
with creased hearts overhear
and tell you Halloween was over last month.
you taught me to fly during naptime
and to live off of invisible pie.
but you think you are a man
roaring “fuck!” at pop-eyed teachers
in creased royal blue polo shirts
telling you to act your age.
last week you were a surgeon opening
the hollow cavity of a pumpkin
and when I asked you what you found inside,
you said either thanksgiving, leaves,
or cake, but you couldn’t be sure.
yesterday you were a librarian with a stroke
of genius
rearranging the books across the plywood shelves
by colour—
red on the top shelf, yellow in the middle, blue on the bottom.
this morning you were a growling dinosaur
sending children shrieking away from your scalpel-sharp
teeth and claws,
as khaki-slacked teachers
in creased foreheads
told you to stop acting your age.
today we glue ornaments to a construction-paper tree
and as you hang twelve or thirteen candy canes
on the same branch, you whisper
to me that you are actually a reindeer.
crumple-mouthed teachers
with creased hearts overhear
and tell you Halloween was over last month.
you taught me to fly during naptime
and to live off of invisible pie.
the miraculous sublime
These photographs seem far away, as if I am looking at them through a telescope or just through the cardboard tube from a roll of paper towels. I am not one of them and they not part of me (see the way they stare?)— or am I? Are they? Perhaps something inside of me is begging my body just to fall, to convulse, to give up and struggle and fight and thrash (for to stay calm and contained is not to give up but to persevere) like the girl in the white dress throwing herself placidly to the floor, caught by a man in uniform. Something inside tells me every day to take off all my clothes and ride my bicycle through Yonkers and to the library, where I will paint on a massive canvas, maybe the carpet in the Millenium Room, with my feet.
And though when I first read the notes from Ellen’s doctor, I felt sick in my stomach, nauseated by her nausea. But when she spoke instead of the doctor (why so many men in uniforms)—I know that I am Ellen, but worse, because I forget that I am Ellen and she is reminded every day by the white white white uniforms and white white white walls. She swallows pills and counts slices of bread but I forget about pills and even more I forget about bread and only remember when I go to sleep that I have forgotten all bread all day, maybe all day yesterday as well, and maybe even the whole day before yesterday.
The asylum is to remember to forget. The uniforms tell you to forget, to release, to never remember what you knew before. They say that if you forget two pieces of bread, you will remember four. But I know that when you forget bread, you forget bread and that is all.
We must remember. We must hold on, to the pieces of bread, both in their fourness and twoness, to the white white white walls and to the blue blue blue sky, to the uniform and to the dresses and to the dark purple suits. We must be conscious, for to be conscious is to be human; to be conscious is to exist.
Ellen- remember your bread. And remember it in plenty.
And though when I first read the notes from Ellen’s doctor, I felt sick in my stomach, nauseated by her nausea. But when she spoke instead of the doctor (why so many men in uniforms)—I know that I am Ellen, but worse, because I forget that I am Ellen and she is reminded every day by the white white white uniforms and white white white walls. She swallows pills and counts slices of bread but I forget about pills and even more I forget about bread and only remember when I go to sleep that I have forgotten all bread all day, maybe all day yesterday as well, and maybe even the whole day before yesterday.
The asylum is to remember to forget. The uniforms tell you to forget, to release, to never remember what you knew before. They say that if you forget two pieces of bread, you will remember four. But I know that when you forget bread, you forget bread and that is all.
We must remember. We must hold on, to the pieces of bread, both in their fourness and twoness, to the white white white walls and to the blue blue blue sky, to the uniform and to the dresses and to the dark purple suits. We must be conscious, for to be conscious is to be human; to be conscious is to exist.
Ellen- remember your bread. And remember it in plenty.
to ______
a german cigar box,
brimming with bracelets from cereal boxes,
ballerina stencils coated in spray paint,
and envelopes marked “luftpost.”
i sift through smooth, flat skipping stones to the bottom.
my fingers brush the white rose corsage
your mother never made you buy
and the daisy chain
you wove into my hair instead.
hope is a phoenix,
a burst of gold and scarlet
birthed from ashes.
i dream you meet a girl.
she has my name,
only spelled all in capital letters.
you light her silent cigarette.
brimming with bracelets from cereal boxes,
ballerina stencils coated in spray paint,
and envelopes marked “luftpost.”
i sift through smooth, flat skipping stones to the bottom.
my fingers brush the white rose corsage
your mother never made you buy
and the daisy chain
you wove into my hair instead.
hope is a phoenix,
a burst of gold and scarlet
birthed from ashes.
i dream you meet a girl.
she has my name,
only spelled all in capital letters.
you light her silent cigarette.
and by we are, i mean we could have been
I.
we slit holes in our worn pockets
and emptied a tin box of pennies into them:
sieves filled with copper,
wandering up and down sidewalks
(pastfrontporchesacrossvacantlotsthroughparks)
coins clinking and chattering at our feet.
we walk backwards to see that they fall facing up.
we leave a shimmering trail,
a winding spider’s web of luck.
II.
the wells in our pockets run dry.
III.
we delve into our satchels,
removing (oneatatime) matchboxes,
opening each drawer (oneatatime)
turning it upside down…
trickling through our fingers onto the cement:
an unused shooting star trapped in a film canister,
a few falcon feathers we used when we were learning to fly
(we don’t need those anymore)
a scuffed sepia stack of polaroids,
from that day we put the armchair in the tallest pine tree
behind the creek and sat for hours, swaying, almostfalling,
handfuls of jet black glass beads
(in rome. the beautiful woman,
tower of ivory clothed in ebony,
her necklace snapped and she didn’t slow her steps.
we sat on the street corner, picking her gems
from the gutter)
IV.
we throw our satchels aside
and strip off our clothing, dropping each garment,
the last stretch of our trail
leading only (to us and) the slab of concrete under our feet
all we have left is a kiss
strung on a length of yellow ribbon.
the tailor made it to onlyever fit us.
we slit holes in our worn pockets
and emptied a tin box of pennies into them:
sieves filled with copper,
wandering up and down sidewalks
(pastfrontporchesacrossvacantlotsthroughparks)
coins clinking and chattering at our feet.
we walk backwards to see that they fall facing up.
we leave a shimmering trail,
a winding spider’s web of luck.
II.
the wells in our pockets run dry.
III.
we delve into our satchels,
removing (oneatatime) matchboxes,
opening each drawer (oneatatime)
turning it upside down…
trickling through our fingers onto the cement:
an unused shooting star trapped in a film canister,
a few falcon feathers we used when we were learning to fly
(we don’t need those anymore)
a scuffed sepia stack of polaroids,
from that day we put the armchair in the tallest pine tree
behind the creek and sat for hours, swaying, almostfalling,
handfuls of jet black glass beads
(in rome. the beautiful woman,
tower of ivory clothed in ebony,
her necklace snapped and she didn’t slow her steps.
we sat on the street corner, picking her gems
from the gutter)
IV.
we throw our satchels aside
and strip off our clothing, dropping each garment,
the last stretch of our trail
leading only (to us and) the slab of concrete under our feet
all we have left is a kiss
strung on a length of yellow ribbon.
the tailor made it to onlyever fit us.
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