Monday, October 23, 1995

Kokovin

Kokovin

I sing the song of my Kokovin,
with kisses of mollasses and wine.
She wants to steal my lips,
my tongue. They're mine,
c'est à moi she says,
et pour l'instant she's right.

Perhaps I'll tell her later
she has only a temporary pass,
un droit passager to my mouth.
I need it to enjoy her syrup matted skin.

Her lips are poetry to my ears,
a french Koko-rico
in the morning of my doze.
There's a licorice innocence
to her candy games.

She takes me playfully,
tickling down ears and neck
Kouji-Kouji-cou
A spidery host slipping down its thread
to couch and blanket its new guest.
Her sugar coated chants
trap me in cotton candy webs,
chocolate feelers finger my future
and I awake too late
to regret her music
touched in Paris,
where love is not always confectionary in nature.

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Thursday, August 17, 1995

Postmodern Poetry

Postmodern Poetry

I like to always have
a pack of gum on me;
I buy it in bulk.
You get the idea:
you offer a piece of gum,
its simple generosity.

I also like poetry.
It's like hanging out,
Playing with two dimensional Legos,
School without the teachers
Playing in the recesses of your mind.

Clipping nails isn't very poetic
But society dictates that we trim,
And clip,
And pluck away the uneeded.
Writers needn't worry, they say.
They're a sanitary bunch.
Certainly more than philosophers,
Who dirty their ideas in writing.
Post-modern writing doesn't need nails.
There's nothing to hold on to.

Perhaps we've got to get a grip.

Take a bottle of whisky for instance.
They make nice traveling companions
Always ready for a mixer.

Addiction is a trip
With all your cultural baggage lost at the airport.
Students and hippies travel light though,
Because they know how to find culture
And whisky
At a convenience store.

Is American culture an oxymoron
or a matter of convenience?
Linguistic entropy tends to disprove
Figurative imagery, poetic communication
Pliably and expressively alive.
I’m taking a few lexical liberties here.
The French find this nauseating.

It always ends the same
Repetition creates truism
Repetition creates truism.

La boucle est bouclée.
(The French love this.
Then again they invented post-modernism.)

After they teach you to play deconstruct
Is it any wonder we want to fuck nature
When we describe it as virgin?
This isn't pastiche or histoire
Simply vulgar and simulacre self-plagiarism.

If today's poem were to fall,
fall in a raped wood,
Would anyone give a shit?

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Saturday, August 12, 1995

Ma Marion

Ma Marion

Enfin ma Marion.
Est-ce une hésitation
de langue, un balbutiement momentané?
Ou bien une initiative,
une tentative de te posséder tendrement ?

Ma Marion, qui n'embrasse pas
à la française. Doux résultat
de la Mar en elle.
Tranquil comme la Méditerranée
sous l'agréable Spanish soleil.

Ma Marion et ses eaux bleues profondes
agitent ma barque plus qu'aucun soufflé ou tempête ne le pourraient.
Je me laisse emporter.
Je m'y noie à volonté.

Ma Marion où ce jeu de mots peut-il aller ?
-J'ai peur que ce ne soit plus
moi qui mène le jeu.-
Ma Marion belle badineuse
me grille without batting an eye
et non sans un plaisir sadiste.
Ma propre marquise est-elle?
Toi qui d'habitude est si infranchissable
au rire, n'est-ce pas, ma Marion ?
Marion, will we still be laughing
long after we marry ?
N'est-elle pas reflexive cette question ?

Ma Marion, avouée maline
et cependant très innocente,
elle n'est en aucune mesure dépendante,
même sous l'ombre de Lolita
qu'elle m'a donné significativement
et pour vous confondre...

Je ne sais plus à qui je m'adresse
Je me perds de nouveau
chaque fois avec le même plaisir
en essayant de garder sur la langue
à la fois le son et le goût
de ma Marion
dans ton nom résonant,
assonant légèrement,
et tout comprenant
pour moi, ma,
oui, Ma, Marion.

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Friday, May 12, 1995

Reading the waters of my life

In his book "A River Runs Through It", Norman Maclean writes eloquently about his own life and the process of examining it. “The fisherman even has a phrase to describe what he does when he studies the patterns of a river. He says he is ‘reading the water,’ and perhaps to tell his stories he has to do much the same thing. Then one of his biggest problems is to guess where and at what time of day life lies ready to be taken as a joke. And to guess whether it is going to be a little or a big joke. For all of us, though, it is much easier to read the waters of tragedy.”

Reading the waters of my own life, it would be very easy to get lost in the interweaving path of the river and its multitude of tributaries. Seen from afar, one might be tempted to get lost in the tragedies that befall the river. I have therefore decided to recount to you the events of just one small bend in the course of my river. And hoping that you have chosen to read these stories at a time of day when life allows itself to be taken as a joke, I’ve decided to write about a time when even the tragedies were life affirming.

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Wednesday, March 15, 1995

I Have Dreamed of You So Much

I Have Dreamed of You So Much
(translation of the poem J'ai Tant Rêvé De Toi, by Robert Desnos)

I have dreamed of you so much that you are losing your reality.

Is there yet time enough to reach this living body and kiss this mouth this birth of voice so dear to me?

I have dreamed of you so much that my arms, accustomed to being crossed on my chest clutching at your shadow will no longer fold to the contours of your body, perhaps.

And that, before the real appearance of that which has been haunting and governing me these many days and years, I might become a shadow.

O scales of emotion.

I have dreamed of you so much that it is no doubt too late for me to wake-up. I am standing asleep, my body exposed to all the appearances of life and love and you, the only one who counts for me today. I would less be able to touch your face and your lips, than the lips and face of the first passer-by.

I have dreamed of you so much, walked, talked, slept with your phantom so much that perhaps and nevertheless the only thing left for me is to become a phantom amongst the phantoms, a hundred times more shadowy than the shadow which gaily strolls and will stroll over the sundial of your life.

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J'ai tant rêvé de toi

J'ai tant rêvé de toi

by Robert Desnos

J'ai tant rêvé de toi que tu perds ta réalité.

Est-il encore temps d'atteindre ce corps vivant et de baiser sur cette bouche la naissance de la voix que m'est chère?

J'ai tant rêvé de toi que mes bras habitués en étreignant ton ombre à se croiser sur ma poitrine ne se plieraient pas au contour de ton corps, peut-être.

Et que, devant l'apparence réelle de ce qui me hante et me gouverne depuis des jours et des années, je deviendrais une ombre sans doute.

O balances sentimentales.

J'ai tant rêvé de toi qu'il n'est plus temps sans doute que je m'éveille. Je dors debout, le corps exposé à toutes les apparences de la vie et de l'amour et toi, la seule qui compte aujourd'hui pour moi, je pourrais moins toucher ton front et tes lèvres que les premières lèvres et le premier front venu.

J'ai tant rêvé de toi, tant marché, parlé, couché avec ton fantôme qu'il ne me reste plus peut-être, et pourtant, qu'à être fantôme parmi les fantômes et plus ombre cent fois que l'ombre qui se promène et se promènera allégrement sur le cadran solaire de ta vie.

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Monday, January 23, 1995

Tracy

Many kids never experience true friendship. They only have groups of people with whom they do stuff, and these groups pass in and out of their lives as they change grades, interests or even shoe sizes.

I, on the other hand, had Tracy Perry. In second grade we were "best friends". He was not in the recess sports or girl chasing crowd and he puked every once in a while, but boy did he have an imagination. Both him and his brother were incredible artists. They both sketched and drew all the time, and if you went over to their house to play espionage or old-west you would see how they had drawn cartoons all over the walls of their room.

Now I was no artist, but Tracy and I both loved to play make-up. We would sit for hours and write long stories with fat pencils on big grey paper with big lines so far apart that there was a third dotted line in the middle; and after we wrote our crazy stories about three-eyed, five-legged monsters who spent their afternoons rolling around chasing people in a continuous sort of cart-wheel, we would read them aloud and act them out. Kids would gather around a little corner of grass near the play-house to watch our little productions. Tracy and I were living in a world of complete imagination.

For almost three years Tracy and I were best friends. One of my best memories was when Tracy and another kid were playing on the blocks, and I asked if I could play too. The other kid said no, that they were playing and I couldn’t join them, and why didn't I just leave? I was crushed, but Tracy stood right up, looked the kid right in the face and said, "That’s not very nice, maybe you’re the one who should leave." Then he smiled at me, re-building my self-confidence in an instant and saving me thousands of dollars in therapy bills at some later time in my life. And off we ran to go play on the swings.

One day things changed though. I realize now that it was I who changed. Slowly I began playing soccer and girl-chase at recess instead of make-believe. It is not that I was trying to be cool or anything, I just liked playing soccer now and then and there was something, that I didn’t fully understand at the time (as if I fully do now) about girls in knee-high socks and pig-tails that made me want to chase them. how Tracy's face would drop when I would tell him I wasn’t going to play make-believe at recess. By seventh grade, the separation was complete. And though we were only divided by one or two lunch tables, in junior high school that equated to being worlds apart.

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