TALKIES

FOREWORD

I hate poems with meaning, with causes, with ideas. I am one of those poets who believe poetry should communicate as directly as an unexpected kiss. If someone were to ask me to describe my poetry, especially this collection, I would say it is very close to the stories you might hear from a friendly but somewhat peculiar neighbor. A neighbor who always seems to be talking about two things at once but you’re not quite sure what. That not quite sure what is the poem, of course: The world beneath the world. Which is where I want to bring you.

I love everyday speech and I love the poetry it creates. It is a speech we sometimes declare unfit for poetry, but that is a horrible mistake. Our everyday speech is reflexively spun out of the deepest levels of our being. We never really think that much about the stories we’re about to tell, or how we’re going to tell them, unless we’re intent on deception. Our ordinary, gossipy stories are, in many senses, our truest signatures.

Compared to other, more fabricated fashions of speech that come and go with the times, everyday speech has a very long pedigree, right back to the emergence of human consciousness if you want to know the truth. It has a warp and woof that has been forged over countless millennia. We simply add our little fillip to it every time we open our mouths. And when we allow the Muse to further charge it with the soul’s authority, that self-same speech can wend its simple unpredictable way to the deepest part of our being and suddenly unseat us like nothing else in this world. Which, after all, is what poetry is all about, isn’t it?

RICK JORGESON COMES BACK FROM THE DEAD

All I remember is looking up from the wheel

and seeing him racing out the ARRIVALS door

like Lazarus escaping from the tomb

I’m saying to myself, and then

all I can see is his head

appearing and disappearing

in the crowd and then all of a sudden

he’s sitting next to me rolling

a doobie and we're both laughing

and I'm telling him it's a miracle, I thought

he was dead, things like that, but it's hard

understanding him because he’s sputtering

and jumping around, telling me everything

that's ever happened to him but in

no particular sequence until

all I can think is, The drugs

must have damaged him, but he

doesn't know how badly, and then

I don't want to think about it anymore,

because all I can think about is myself,

how people sometimes look at me

like they know something's broken,

something that's not going to get fixed

anymore, and then I hear him telling me

he's on a program now, that he's OK,

except he's still living with his parents

so he's not really sure if he's OK or he’s not,

and its so funny both of us start laughing

again, and all of a sudden I’m saying,

Why don't we hit Oeschlaeger's,

maybe Valerie’ll be at the opening,

but I can tell by this funny,

kind of helpless look on his face

he doesn't really know if he knows her

or not, so I tell him he hasn't met

this particular Valerie, and for a moment

he looks relieved and then he looks worried

and then he's going down too many tunnels

to follow and then I look up from

wherever I am and I see him

on the other side of the room

talking to Valerie like he knows

who she is, but I’m hoping

she doesn’t start

chatting him up with all her stuff

about art, because he’ll be all over her

about that PBS Special on Arizona

and how he hates that yellow shirt

his father wears, but it’s too late,

she's already headed for the door

and he’s sputtering and gasping and

looking across the room at me like

he’s not going to make it, and I’m trying

to get to him but everything’s

moving so slow and then he's right

in my eyes screaming it always happens

like this but he doesn't know why,

and then all I remember is

holding him and kissing him

and whispering to him over and over,

Neither do I, Rick, neither do I.

THIS IS HOW I SPEND MY LIFE

I wake up at 8 or 9 in the morning

and float about my bed belly up,

like an ice flow broken loose

from some larger part of itself.

After that, I spend two or three hours

removing the territorial markers

stuck in my body the day before

by the two brunettes. When I’m done,

I have lunch with my wife,

who is rapidly disappearing.

Around two or three in the afternoon,

there are several high-speed drive-bys,

followed by frantic phone calls

from the two brunettes, demanding to know

who moved the territorial markers.

I am accused of double-dealing,

of giving the property away twice, of ignorance

of the law. After about an hour of this,

I become an Indian. I tell them

The Land cannot be owned,

that The Land owns itself.

This is always followed

by a moment of strategic silence,

after which they inform me I am correct,

that the Great White Father agrees

The Land cannot be owned,

that The Land owns itself,

they only want to travel through me

to the waters of Redondo beach, to the shores

of Kevin Costner, but I know

they are speaking with forked tongue:

I can already hear the hissing of railroads

and the huge herds of cattle

stomping up and down on me,

fattening themselves for market.

Sometimes at night

I dream of my mother.

She has been dead now for 3 or 4 years.

She is always waiting for me on the front porch

of one of the thousands of identical homes

in Levittown New York. When she sees me, she tells me

she is sorry to hear about the property lines,

but they are unavoidable. When I look around

at the hundreds and hundreds of rows

of white clapboard homes, I am reminded

of those vast, memorial graveyards

for American soldiers you see in France.

There are paper flowers everywhere.

VOICES

I've been thinking of Alexander again.

This time, he is twenty-six, or twenty-seven.

From the heavens, he appears a brilliant speck

at the prow of a large, granular moth

crawling across the floor of Lesser Asia.

But something is changing in Alexander.

He may still lean forward

on Bucephalus like a hawk

thirsting for blood, but some almost

imperceptible drift is occurring

within his soul, whispering

it is time, that the Gods

are waiting for him, somewhere, just

to the east, that one day he will wake

as if from another body and the great army

all around him will fall from his shoulders

like a dry, weightless husk, and one

by one, the bright caravans

of cargo trailing back to Aristotle

will stutter, and disappear,

like rubbish in the wind,

and he will ride out

on the endless savannahs

bordering the Great Stream of Ocean

and the tall grass all around him

will suddenly comb, and divide, like a

slithering of snakes, and then an opening

will appear just above his eyes

and the huge horse beneath him,

the spleen and the lungs and the

cock and the foam-crazed mouth

will rise up inside him

like a dark rush of cries

until there is but the one body,

until there is but the one great heart.

MIDNIGHT SWIM,

PALM SPRINGS HILTON

I'm trying not to look at the young couple

kissing in the shallow water across from me.

They're trying not to look at me either,

but more out of a kind of embarrassment

for the way I've just stumbled

into their lives, but I can't stop

looking over at the girl, her slender

breasts made beautiful

by the moon and the restless,

white reflections of the water,

and then I see her face, how open

it is, how happy she is to be here,

to be away from the kids, or maybe

they're not even married, but there's

that tenderness, and although

I didn't care for him at first,

what with the long, blonde curls and the

muscles and the Gold's Gym swim suit,

there's a certain innocence about him too,

about the happy, almost embarrassed way

he keeps looking up at her, because

he's already remembering that other place,

that place that is theirs alone,

that he is hungering for like salt,

that will open up inside him

like a stain when he swims out

to find her on the darkness

of the waters, and she

comes floating up to meet him

through the surface of her body.

PINTADA

Donde esta Padre Deofilo y Guillermo?

I keep asking the Indian housekeeper,

who keeps pointing to the hills

and repeating, Las montanas, Senor,

like she doesn't have the slightest idea

what I'm talking about, but she knows

what’s going on and so do I, the Jesuits

have decided to show me who's boss

in Pintada, so here I am, kicking stones

from one fly-papered end of town

to the other, sure that whatever

bearded gods are left in heaven

are leaning over the edge of it laughing,

like they do in the movies: Ah, there he is,

our Hero, still searching for his Magdalena,

and then I’m stumbling past

a tattered line of dirt-floor shacks

trailing off into the jungle,

no windows, no doors,

only a dark shape

where the door should be,

and I look up, see a woman

in a dark slip staring out at me

like she’s slowly undressing herself

and my chest tightens and then I'm

past the door, feeling frightened

and then foolish, telling myself

I'd have to be crazy, if I turned back

she'd be putting curlers in her hair

or pulling some bare-assed kid

on her lap, but a part of me

doesn't care, a part of me

is already standing in her doorway,

watching her rise up to greet me

the way water rises, her dark,

muscular stomach pressing

against me like a warm hand until

there is nothing between us

but the sound of our breathing

and her sharp, sudden cries,

and then I’m sliding down

her body in a tangle of

shadows, we are falling together

for hours or days or years,

or however long it takes

for the ravenous flame vines

to open and die and for

there to be a strangeness

all around us, like autumn, whispering

we have become two bodies again,

but we will refuse to believe it

until someone of consequence

serves us papers and coffee

prepared for the occasion, but you

will barely touch yours, placing them

on the table in front of you as if

they were offerings, and then,

after we have told each other

the stories we have told no one,

not even ourselves, you will leave

by one door and I by the other,

and one by one, the roads and the rivers

that lead to this place will dry up

like vines until nothing is left

of us but these walls, and the harsh,

dolorous song we will sing all our lives.

PATHOS

In this version of my life,

I'm a farmer on the island of Pathos.

Although I still have that same dopey,

open Irish face I've always had,

I've shrunk several inches,

and become wiry, or scrawny,

depending on who you talk to.

But as you work your way down

past the rubble of my ribs,

you'll discover my member

has grown to a considerable size,

something that makes the donkeys

curl back their lips

like the talking horses on television

whenever they see me.

As for the farm, it is like Pathos itself,

rocky, and dry, and suitable

for only the most stubborn of animals.

The sheep, I might add, are hardly worth keeping.

Sometimes I cannot bear watching them

shuttling back and forth across the fields

as if they had no minds of their own.

Like small clouds of rubbish,

I find myself thinking.

As for my wife, she has become

as huge as Hector, and as implacable

as the black shiny cows she milks like a herd,

although there are only two of them.

And though she still has the thick-rooted hair

and high, Slavic cheeks of her youth,

she has taken to dressing entirely

in black and crossing herself endlessly,

in the manner of widows,

even when she is lying next to me.

And though you'll still find me here,

squinting bravely into the sun

as if it were my future,

I no longer do so

with the assurance

of my youth, but the grim resignation

of someone whose name

only the donkeys remember.

CELTS

A woman I made love to thirty years ago

is sitting in her motel room telling me

how much she's come to admire the Celts,

their jewelry, how beautiful it was,

all those concentric spirals, and curves,

but I can't tell if she's trying to seduce me

or still making amends for her mother,

the way she's suddenly reminding me

how much her mother disliked me

for being Irish, and from Brooklyn,

And for not kissing her ass,

she leans in confidentially to remind me,

but I let it slip between us like a shadow

because I can't bring myself to tell her

how indifferent I was to her mother,

who didn’t even know she’d lost

the moment I had her daughter

trembling beneath me

like an open wound, and then

I'm sinking down inside myself

half-listening to her go on about the Celts,

how civilized they were, that the women

kept their own property after marriage,

Something that didn't happen here

until quite recently, she says, as if

wanting to comfort me in some odd,

historical way against the vagaries

of my second divorce, but I’m so

deep inside myself I can barely

hear her, and then all of a sudden

I’m swimming up like crazy to the surface

because there’s something she’s saying

about the men, that the men stripped themselves

naked, painted their bodies blue

before hurling themselves into battle,

that even Caesar feared them, she says,

and then, she pauses for a moment,

as if searching for the right word, and then,

suddenly, she finds it: Because the Celts

were so fatalistic, she says, and all of a sudden

the women, and the rage, and the blue, naked bodies

are circling all around me, looking for a place

to land, and they almost do,

because I almost say to her:

They were like us, artists,

how else can you explain it?

but I don't, because I know

it's not quite right, and then

something, a voice inside me, whispers:

The women were as fierce as the men,

and then from somewhere deeper:

Everything. They honored everything,

and suddenly the women, and the jewelry,

and the blue, naked bodies come whirling down

around me like a flock of crows and I'm

saying to myself: Honor, it was honor

made them what they were,

but when I look across the bed at her,

I don't know what to say because

I don't really know what I mean

by honor, or even how to begin

to explain it, so I say nothing.

What is there to say?

What can I say,

I who have honored nothing.

HEROES

I've been searching for Alexander again,

drifting from ruin to ruin with only

the vaguest of currents to guide me,

and now the winds have blown me

to Alexandria, where I am

feverishly descending

in a wrought-iron bird-cage

from a room that has clattered all night

with the unending street noise of Egypt,

a room that is slowly disappearing

above me in a rising and falling

of cables like snakes,

and then I’m

somewhere outside

in a side street or alley, turning

this way then that, trying to find myself

on the map, and then there are

five or six streets

suddenly coming together in front of me

and I’m thinking, This must be it, the ancient

crossroads, where the great library was, and the tomb,

but there's nothing, just a mosque, and some

mustard-colored tenements, and a clutter

of shabby, Arabic bookstalls, and then

someone behind me

is whispering, Come, Come,

but I don't know who he is,

he is one of those guides who appear

so mysteriously out of nowhere

in Egypt, he is pulling me

to the side of the mosque, to a huge,

cylindrical well, there is a tomb

at the bottom, I can see it, it is simple,

almost spare, in the Moslem way, I can see

the four doors of the Koran circling it

like a ring, and although I know

it is not Alexander’s, one of the doors

is pulling me down, making me dizzy,

and then, suddenly, I feel him, just

to the east, just beyond the door to Mecca,

and the guide is whispering Anixander, Anixander,

like he’s reading my mind and then I’m up on

the lip and he’s right in my ear, hissing Go, Go,

and for a moment I almost do,

but the drop is too far, the ladder

too rickety, and then I remember

my shoulder bag, I'd have to leave it, everything

would be lost: tickets, wallet, journal, and I

suddenly become afraid, I don't know

who I can trust, thievery has such

a deceptively smiling face

in this country that I wave him off: No, No,

Baba, Baba,Too old, Too old, I say,

but I can tell by the look on his face

he knows it is not a matter of age,

but of trust: Yes, Yes, Baba, Baba, Too old,

he says back, in whatever mixture

of Arabic and English he can muster,

and I suddenly become ashamed,

there is something about the geniality

of these people I don't understand,

and then he is leading me back

to the mosque, it is filling up

with men, they are gathering

around the high voice

of the Iman, there is a huge sorrow

rising from their throats, it is

moving through me

like a knife, and then I’m

on my knees, pouring myself out,

and all I can think about is Joan,

that she should have been here

to guide me, Joan of the many arms

and the many weapons, Joan

who loves me and hates me,

who is driven by shadows,

who would have flung herself

against the door until she entered

every chamber of your body, Oh you

who I am looking for,

you who know only honor,

Oh vain and brave and beautiful,

Oh murderous, murderous heart.

SPAEKINGS (SPEAKINGS)

Author’s Note:

I really didn't know what to think about these poems at first, as they came in a group, perfectly complete, which is almost never the case with me. To add to that, my fingers kept typing "spaekings" whenever I tried to type "speakings", which is the title that somehow kept pressing to the top of my consciousness like a trapped bubble. But in addition to all this, there was something else, something altogether strange about these poems that I couldn't quite put my finger on. I somehow knew that I had never written poems like this before, but I wasn't quite sure what distinguished them from all my previous work. One thing for sure: the poems were intensely speakable, more than anything I had ever done, despite the fact that I have always prided myself on the speech-like quality of my work. But these were something else: I had only to speak them out to see how perfectly they fit the pacing and breath of everyday, common speech. And yet there was something uncommon about that very speech, because in some strange way, whenever I read the poems or spoke them aloud, the voice I heard reminded me of the urgent, measured voice that had always risen up and spoken to me at critical moments of my life.

But there were still other things about the poems that were new to me. For one, they were instantly memorable, i.e., I found I could re-speak them as though they had been engraved on my cortex at the moment of conception. Peculiar things like this happen to poets all the time, of course, and tend to keep them honest. In my own case, I had the vague sense I had received a prophecy of sorts, but I had no idea what until several years later when my obsession with achieving a more speech-like written poetry accidentally pushed me through the looking- glass into the land of oral composition. I realized then that the Muse had given me (in Spaekings) a slight taste of orality, a mode of composition in which poems are not only as intensely speakable as our everyday speech is, but also, like the endless stories we tell each other, instantly memorable. The fact that these characteristics are not usually found in written poetry, (especially the instantly memorable) and yet were given to me in the form of writing, makes them quite strange beasts to my mind. But unlike the secretive, double-headed beasts that stare out at us from our ancient myths, these beasts were mine. And, as I soon found out, they weren't about to go away when I closed the book.

FIRST SPEAKING

There are many speakings,

but only one which is true.

It is urgent,

ignorant of its own message.

SECOND SPEAKING

Some men live alone.

At night, when they wake,

they hold themselves

until they disappear.

Some men live with other men.

Sometimes, when they look in the mirror

they can see the face of the other one

moving back and forth beneath their own.

Some men live with women.

The women slowly absorb them

leaving only a shell that is brittle,

and glitters. The shell can do anything.

Sometimes, it gets up at night

and looks for itself.

THIRD SPEAKING

The men looked across the river at the women.

They wanted the women, but what they

really wanted was the part that flowered

when they touched it.

Some men wanted the part that flowered

to be colorless. The women refused.

These men became women.

Other men wanted the part that flowered

to be red. Like blood. When it wasn't

red enough, they crushed the women

to make them bleed redder.

Snow Angels

I was six. No, five, I was five: my first snow.

I remember the angel suddenly coming together

and then bleeding out beneath me

like I was turning myself inside out,

and then I remember awakening

to a white field, because the angels

were always a surprise to me,

the way they kept falling in such

peculiar positions, like someone

screaming, or dying. Like the wings.

Friends would take me aside,

tell me the wings were a bit too much:

Like a Babylonian lion's, really.

Those wings, they'd say.

They were right of course,

but what could I say to them except

I couldn't help it, that my arms

always moved up and down like that

whenever I fell down out of heaven.

Sometimes I felt like telling them

maybe it would help

if they thought of the angels

as small relief-maps of my soul,

sudden, uncontrolled curdlings

that occurred whenever I stopped,

opened myself to the sun, or the moon.

And then there were times

I didn't know what to say, except

maybe they should think of the angels

as detailed descriptions of another life.

A life I was living but knew nothing about.