Happiness in Love

Slightly different version posted December 11, 2007, 00:26:00 CST:

The wedding was to have taken place at the spout, at the fish mouth of the fountain, where the ice had stopped its tumble from the bubbler, that in summer entertained the old and the children and caused the others to look for pennies in their pockets and purses, pennies to cast to the feet of nudes. Parish priest passed over, the pastor was to have given the order of service and the man, the groom, a handsome daredevil of rectitude, was to have given his hand to the woman, the bride, the statuesque caregiver of whispers. G. had had this in mind the entire time, asking how does this? wearing white mink for winter, before supper. Given savings. The running arm of love of one man for one woman who saves him, each day mattering a little more than the next, each day mattering a little more than the last. Each day mattering more than the thirst. How in this loving matter only loving matters. The man, the woman, the footpath. The lovers heard early in the morning at their water. Pouring water for coffee from the tap. Arriving graciously, cautiously, warily, safely to nest. Talk of love on the phone. It was an easy conversation. The love was a bumper crop. The love was coming out noodles through the receiver. He loved her more than he had ever loved anyone. His happiness was complete. She let him more than she had ever let anyone love her. The happiness was a tablecloth for a picnic. The happiness was the carpet in the hallway. The happiness was the wall behind the painting. The happiness was the sky behind the cloud. The happiness was the seating in the Saab. The happiness was the carrier, the weekend, the chimes. The happiness was not among the people or women who were to have witnessed it, who could not be clear about or without it, who were in it, whose own happiness was phrased in book order—she, her happiness was to have been a seal within eternity, in the Wednesdays of life.

Building #2

Janis wasn't pretty in the face. Even her voice wasn't pretty. Her voice was a cave, a cause, a gouge in the universe. She was unrecognized, even after she became famous. She sang and died of recognition. She was never once rejected for her lung capacity or her diaphragm or her vocal range or her throat. She was rejected for her mouth.

It's no different from playing saxophone or oboe or flute -- women making faces. Even God hears more than he sees, God who betrayed Beethoven. To want the experience but not the view.

(March 17, 1995)

The Semicolon

Grammar from Lesson 14C.

Do not use a semicolon between parts of unequal grammatical rank, such as a clause and a phrase or a main clause and a subordinate clause.

NOT: Lucy has three topics of conversation; her courses, her career, and her travels.

BUT: Lucy has three topics of conversation: her courses, her career, and her travels.

Semicolon

Lucy has three topics of conversation; her courses, her career, and her travels, not, but: Lucy has three topics of career conversation, her truck needs a valve job, Harvey, the dormitory clown, and the bridge under construction. The bridge was under construction, not that it needed a valve job; it needed career and travel plans; it needed a hot tank with gasoline in it. Harvey needed a valve job; along came Harvey; we heard about the final decision to take a detour to the dormitory. Along came Harvey and Lucy, who needed lab jobs; they went jogging one afternoon, never returning, and are numbered among the tens of thousands who disappear every year. "The educational TV channel is never boring," said the missing Lucy. The report is true; Lucy is traveling.

(ca. 1985-86)

Dying Not

Marrying Time.

Your love is all tied up in a knot. You know what love is not. You know what love is silently for you. You heard love in the branches of the oak tree. It was a bird living in fear of the ground, where the cat walks. The songbird gets its seed from the feeder. The rose bush flares blooming after lying about dying winters ago. You read the poems of dead women. He gives you poems by living men. Dying is for animals. Living is for hens.

There was no tall man; there were only other men in their own skin. The walker attracted my inner eye; I would try like him. I would walk to his house. By the sea to his knee. I would crot.

Beginner's luck in looking well, fair.

Hell for disjointedness, for holing friends, golf.

In one instant, oil frees flowing, boot tears.

So marry, then.

Credo

A work of writing is old and new. It's old because words are old and meanings are familiar. It's new because words move causally and causelessly to new tempos and creeds. Creeds are old and new. A creed is an issue. A child is an issue. A writer is a child. An issue is a word. An issue is: I miss you. Or a political issue, the old insoluble. Or a personal issue, I miss you. All the same issue. In writing there's meaning, bent, and shape but there's you and I miss you. I missed you is the same issue. We missed the boat, or also, we missed the landing. We missed church or switched church. The practitioner misses tea for church or God for earth, some combination like that. Some missing, which is a word for fail. Failing is saying no to grace. Missing the boat or the landing, one of those. Grace is letting issues be creeds, new, old, too many to name, all the same.

(ca. 1982)

Joy Revisited

Where is it? Rejecting little wren cloying her way south, flying in an army, a drove, following her instincts to the meadows of seasonal shift, the divide, flipping past innuendoes of land, river, lake, boisson, ledge, hope in her h'rippy little song, heard in the north, in the tree outside a house, seeds for her tenure.

Basal distance

if it didn t have periods and commas it d be a poem about apostrophes and question marks about scenery do you have scenery a winter ride to the lebanese psychiatrist the reason to go to the psychiatrist is so men and women won t have to but tell them about it later so they can benefit from it i said my anxiety on tuesdays is revolting it used to be workshop day i used to like LIKE workshop day but ten years without workshop comma tuesdays eat me what is causing your reaction he asked war i said he said are you like the rest of us and you disagree with war yes i said i disagree with war and he said only one man agrees with war but he won t go to the war then he told me try meditation and i said it s not enough you must have a teacher for meditation on tuesdays an elevator is going up and down inside my body s frame not quote unquote mental an elevator is going up and down inside my body s frame not italics mental italics basal dash basal than mental double dash basal distress better than quote unquote mental illness in reject that label we experience it for them or driving in a winter glass to the doctor at eight early tend the gist you are seeking and save them red tape paperwork and general satisfaction of given treatment call it basal distance or basal distress not mental illness i heard the african american woman psychologist say her wards are mentally sick are white sick ones her black patients hurts typical i said raising my hand basal distance question mark might it be long before mental illness basal distance fills it next question mark

Red Squirrel

This is a never-ending day with sunshine crowning an eventual eclipse or a virtual exposure of no news from China from Beirut from Jerusalem where is Jericho? is Jericho in the news where is Tabriz? The sell out came in her not asking if I wanted to live she always thought no one really wanted to live or had their reasons for living she had liked dying just fine and wanted to see more of it had gotten to like watching it and forgetting there was functionality in plain living not imaginable in her graceless world of bloody corpses and smashed bones raked off by a yard junta as not edible flying girl flying sea flying pictures flying orgasm flying automobiles flying sandwich and chips flying rich folk flying poem the only thing not flying were her orderly friends with their small to large hangups and their physical difficulties one had a wired jaw one a hard time getting pregnant one a head that turned to autism if he was tired he would bash or bang it and one with a document of some estimable value that needed a script doctor before she got the doctor doctor not to notice her independence or to pay nice compliments he was no more than a ruddy cube she was not near her friends anymore they were spirited away on their flying rug or curled with a gun or watching tv not pulsing to operate what they had quit wanting careers or fame they were happy to watch reruns of seinfeld and melrose place she was not their friend anymore though she had liked all of them they were running not flying they were selling but not collecting they were free but unhappy she was happy but unfree and the blood of the seal went to bonemeal for the richest of the riches who lived in the townhouse of the flying squirrel not the flying girl of all seas ...

(Published in Minnetonka Review, issue 2, Troy Ehlers, ed., March 2008, p. 14.)

"Bitter" Revision

I guess let's just talk about it: hope. I guess let's just think about it: money. I guess let's just cut up for an hour or two: nine laughs. Let's agonize about church issues.

I was so steadfastly there, not charging, not nagging, not expecting, not asking, never needing to beg (paid by work), charitably giving thoughts and words and listening out one at a time for two decades. Now I'm old. Men are just starting out on the path of the parasite, the manly collection plate, to increase them, to buy them, to get one, to buy one and take one home, a divorce nuptial, their gaining a girl (again) or this time a hen with a little purse on a little strap or an industrial doctor's bag or a clicky set of equals, King Care.

Ah so, so I look better than I aged. I'm not a cheap date, as I had once made proud of being. I need steak or a doctor's drug to keep my weight from shredding. The Jews eat cattle but not pig; the Catholics eat a bone slice of Him. I try to talk with Him, but he's crowded by insiders. I was a loser. I mention it. I mention liking meals at chain diners as much as meals at good Italian restaurants. The sign of the prostitute is her diamond engagement ring. Gays' "marriage is love" intrigues Greek men upstairs.

I loved without marriage and the men loved without divorce and we loved a twenty-four-year-old eating and how gracious she shone over a tame bottle of beer. Yours is yours, mine is mine.

What did they want the favored ones for? Good mothers. What did the favored ones pay? I was thinking that the feminists pounding the city pavement had increased rent with every footstep, not that I was not one, but we had not earned our money at it or put our money together: "Women" was too broad a category. The favored were coming to buy our men from us, without our sad work we put into it, without the love we showered on them, without the lost decisions we left up to them, as we were practicing, always practicing.

Bitter Tide

I guess let's just talk about it: hope. I guess let's just think about it: money. I guess let's just cut up for an hour or two: nine laughs. Let's agonize about church issues. Let's counter violence with appetites. Let's charitably caretake Wagonmaster's appetite for violence. You spotted him twelve years later, over the phone. You declared you knew all about him, that I had a thing for bad guys, for the violent types. I chided you for not letting me in on your man knowledge, which you didn't. The girls/babes/chicks/shebas were violent themselves or countered none. One had been choked, and I acted like I didn't care. She had not cared when mine had pelted me with the words I had heard come from her, the c word, for one, which I now use about our down theres. My down there (pointing), a genuflection was it before. Now (thanks, gratefully, to Daphne Merken's recent writings about sex) I realize my life as a sexual beggar or beggar who is sexual has only just started. Men want to be paid, and since I didn't charge to now, they are my competition for getting paid; for me it's too late; for them it's just beginning ... the later-in-life male whores, the second act.

I was so steadfastly there, not charging, not nagging, not expecting, not asking, never needing to beg (paid by work), charitably giving out thoughts and words and listening to one at a time for two decades. Now I'm old. Men are just starting out on the path of the prostitute, the manly collection plate, to increase them, to buy them, to get one, to buy one and take one home, a divorce nuptial, their gaining a girl (again) or this time a hen with a little purse on a little strap or an industrial doctor's bag or a clicky set of equals [squeels on her heels, vooz, twos, strues blue true coos, bazooms, shrooms, runes and stoons, stoon dones, les drones, peonies, ponies, phonies, cronies, bone monies, Shoney (a euthanasia), vroge heir], King Care.

Ah so, so I look better than I aged. I'm not a cheap date, as I had once made proud of being. I need steak or a doctor's drug to keep my weight from shredding. The Jews eat cattle but not pig; the Catholics eat a bone slice of Him. I try to talk with Him, but he's crowded by insiders. I was a loser. I mention it. I mention liking meals at chain diners as much as meals at good Italian restaurants. They were putting gas in a car when they fed me: men. Next they will be paid by jerking a guy/by rubbing a guy like a boss they haven't met, their new gal's ex-husband, that is hers by law, but no one views laws that way. The sign of the prostitute her diamond engagement ring. Gays' "marriage is love" intrigues the big guy upstairs. The gays all have good jobs.

I loved without marriage and the men loved without divorce and we loved a twenty-four-year-old eating and how gracious she shone over a tame bottle of beer, even smoking like Uma in the dance number, a bad girl, a girl to get you in trouble with her bad ass black manager of a dad's dad. So I'm broke, on public assistance, diagnosed, barely shouldering, barking and call on you cheated. Yours is yours, mine is mine until death makes its frenzied curtain call over my live womb, then my live breast, then my live neck, and live green eyes, and live midsection and live tail. Eighteen thousand was the most I ever earned in a year.

What did they want the fat ones for? Good mothers. For what did the fat ones pay at the office? I was thinking that the feminists pounding the city pavement had increased rent with every footstep, not that I was not one, but we had not earned our money at it or put our money together: "women" was too broad for our category. The fat women were coming to buy our men from us, without our sad work we put into it, without the love we showered on them, without the lost decisions we left up to them, practicing, always practicing for a bigger better day.