Still Thinking of TravelThat austere beauty a monument to stupidity: they cut down all the trees. Then for centuries they were owned, hungry, tough, stunted, religious, ill. Volcanoes and earthquakes, two continental plates rending a rockfield. Roots like cobras thread the voluptuous ruins. Only fools and rude children stop smiling. The Buddha encourages some killing. Wear white crisp short-sleeve shirts to the demo. A certain kind of hysterics is reserved for soldiers. But for the most part I stay home. When fever comes, a wet, cold – very cold – washcloth descends on my brow, and for the never-expected allover shaking cold, one that is well-wrung and warm, my eyes shut tight throughout. ContextObjects from happier times do not mock. May raise a questioning eyebrow like dogs, who also learned that human art. Or approach with their leash, though it’s you who slipped it. Decades proved the inherited ashtray had no other uses. The photo in ancient plastic became someone else. The inlaid box that held in reverse sequence pills, paperclips, stamps, and the sun evades a stranger’s gaze. SidekickAfter fifty pages I decided he was a kindred spirit. Would recommend him to anyone possibly interested, or not. Some entries I skimmed. The repositioning of a pre-born calf, the death of the horse – too alien, rural. Like the priest he felt for some reason he should admire. But his walks through the forest, his thoughts on those walks – I could have had them. Did. The animadversions on Americans, who seemed to have landed collectively on the moon, their ebullient mutual slaughter and vanity in vacuum – these seemed only slightly more distanced than mine. The dragon at the edge of the woods, with its glum humor, had wandered in from my own work! The house with its beams and hearth and hanging pots and age-old plaster dust was there, but elegized so little it could have been a condo. Likewise the philosophers-to-be he had known at school – I envied, devoured, mentally dropped the names that on his pages lay flat and youthful. Eventually I noticed those he didn’t mention. Wondered if he too feared, more than leaf-rot, that remark I encountered somewhere in Sartre, “a speck of boredom in the provinces.” ExcursionCorridors think they’re innocent – provide a service. To our “lifeless,” they say “ecumenical.” Take credit for the efficiencies behind one door, refuse blame for the neighboring graft and harassment. The light that fills them is that of the world, which neither confirms nor denies. The one who appears had no trouble getting past the lobby. Security cannot now be summoned. His aims differ from those of Him whose return the gentiles await, but there may be areas of overlap. Executives, consultants, tech support, counsel, whatever brass is in residence, even temps and gofers flee their cubicles and corners and, gibbering and gasping, crowd the corridors. Hypertension manifests, clawing at ties. Various levels of women try to take control of themselves, bring order; see themselves as if from a distance doing so. The whole crying mass attempts to fit through the door of the stairwell. Still in sight of the elevators, the one who has come regards the unmanaging managers and advances. He may be considering “healing,” but the word itself has become a wound ... Through wildly open doors, he observes fallen chairs, strewn files, distraught and strobing monitors that must all be cleaned up. The War EffortWhat I’d like is a briefing – cold urgent men delivering facts to me who am neither but respect, even tremble before facts. As I’m sure Biden does, while his predecessor believed only in momentary tropisms of the will, and refused briefings, and was and is loved by those I see as essentially him. So that my world has become medieval, allegorical: a brutish giant clumping destructively about, wanting through hurt and exclusion to worsen an already bad poem. But the material dropped on my desk is not clean bullet points suggesting which thief to let off, which tyrant praise so as not to anger more useful ones. It’s scrolls. Worm-eaten, musty, sealed tomes. Loose brittle sheets. And all are stuck with post-it notes that refer to each other with faded interrobangs. I hunch. I sneeze. I peer. I pursue the mystery of pain, but the texts assert one more profound: that the posture I have adopted is useful. Thus briefed, I formulate a plan of action. Visualize ship- shaped blocks advancing over wide blue paper, cavalry deploying. But have only a rotary phone, and when at length the tone gives way to a voice, that voice is near tears. What’s wrong? There’s nothing worse than this job, tears say. My back always hurts. They’re mean. The pay stinks. History will get you out of there, I say. Life will be better. I’ll get you out! Reflecting meanwhile how missiles falling, screens turning to final snow would also have been an answer, but it too has passed. Sands of MarsQuite early I stood there, thin wind in the earphones of my helmet. Small sun, interesting sky. Perhaps I took readings, but basically my job was to stand there, heroic, alone. Even better the outer satellites, ice mountains, a gas giant overhead. It was before I imagined jobs, or needing math as well as words, or loneliness, which came with puberty. Now the airlock opens, ramp descends, I walk among crystals of no identifiable phylum slowly eating each other. Spores, viruses knock at my spacesuit, eager to colonize. The livid, willful clouds follow rules I needn’t have come here to learn. Duty to ShadowsIt is the highest rung of education in that culture, and they’ve actually kept it from being overrun by unpromising children of the rich. (Who spit and hiss outside the temples until they’re made to leave; those accepted refer to them as “bright lights.”) The acolytes then progress through the study and worship (the translation is wrong) of candles, oncoming evening in rooms and gardens, the somber but malleable shade of heavy furniture. They then learn to walk, communing, negotiating with what one casts at different hours. Spend years on the mysterious bond between grey days and the highest, hottest noon, in which one disappears. In music, silence; in public affairs, the primordiality of crime; in love – in love, they’re taught, there is no shadow unless one counts forgiveness. When graduated adepts walk, all pride at a distance, they are honored, if seen. In later years, having exerted subtle influence, they sit over tea, considering rain (each drop announces its arrival) or the shadows cast by awnings, people, lamps, which aren’t death exactly. A Feeble FolkProverbs 31 Lynxes and other mid-sized cats who used to prey on them are mostly gone now. (Wolves remain; organization wins out, as usual.) Matriarchal clan-structure. Claws adapted for digging; they steal onions and turnips, take them to their burrows. Long, ultra-sensitive snouts can distinguish among explosives and motor oils used by the different sides. Formerly ranging from the desert across the central steppe to the mountains, they now cling to the higher peaks, more difficult for tanks. Spring displays and rivalries among males much reduced. When a matriarch and half her brood die in crossfire, a keening can be heard from an entire settlement. One might think that Mind has swept across them, rather than, as panpsychists believe, that they are as a whole a specific stage of Mind. Like rocks, like everything. (Tanks themselves probably identify with the ore they came from, not with what they do.) CinnabonOn the first I spoke in Nashville two blocks from a megachurch. I told them that “faith” is the foulest four-letter word. There were shots, but my bulletproof glass held; I was hustled to the car. Quite a fracas ensued, I learned, between my young supporters and the devout. On the third, near St. Louis, I said that every last Confederate statue could be replaced by good race men and women, which I’d thoroughly approve, but they (black audience) would still own one percent of the wealth. Thought of quoting Yeats (Ireland will be free and you still break stone), but too abstruse, as usual. Reaction was mixed; improved when I listed local redlining banks and corporate offices. Whole next week on the run, but on the twelfth, as planned, friends and I invaded that broadcast. I read my psychological analysis, caused an estimated three hundred maga heart attacks. I’m sorry about the hostages and those officers. (The army remains the big question. Some I’ve turned have been discharged, arrested, shot.) In Philly, in a car, I had one of those moments – thought too much what I could be doing. A newspaper blew along the street. As an image it had had no oomph since the Sixties, but depressed me till I noticed my picture on it, which made it at least more ambiguous. SeattleNever to be experienced again – actually, only experienced in books. (Film friends are generally philistines; why shouldn’t they like each other?) Writers, artists, and freeloaders born in exile from the Village, the Left Bank, or Berlin. Our only masterpieces our ambitions. Fueled by youth (which unfortunately favors no one pretension) and weed. (Excluded for too much cocaine). Memorably mad (or scarily, when they weren’t imitating someone). Girls discovering, demanding, sometimes achieving respect, or leaving. Nightlong confessions, the horror of male tears. The apartment a damp museum of flotsam circling me, whom all proclaimed the king of a rainy city. All summer, drought. Now weeks of storm whose only function is disposal. Three outlying leaves have turned a brilliant red but the rest, falling, seem to bear only a memory of color. As if no other process were at work, and besides being torn down they were leached by the rain. Frederick Pollack is the author of two book-length narrative poems, THE ADVENTURE and HAPPINESS, both Story Line Press; the former to be reissued by Red Hen Press. Two collections of shorter poems, A POVERTY OF WORDS, (Prolific Press, 2015) and LANDSCAPE WITH MUTANT (Smokestack Books, UK, 2018). Pollack has appeared in Salmagundi, Poetry Salzburg Review, The Fish Anthology (Ireland), Magma (UK), Bateau, Fulcrum, Chiron Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, etc. Online, poems have appeared in Big Bridge, Hamilton Stone Review, BlazeVox, The New Hampshire Review, Mudlark, Rat’s Ass Review, Faircloth Review, Triggerfish, etc.
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