Lit Heroes #6 - Ulysses

As far as I am concerned, I'm a born couch potato.
I grew up on TV just as you did and always considered
That there's enough change of scene on the screen.

I ignore who brought up the idea that I was restless.
Sure, I have traveled a bit––mere obligation––every
Friggin' day I goddamn prayed to rejoin my little wify…

Not one of the exploits they ascribe to me makes sense.
Since I got back I at last live the present.
I am sick of all the time wasted.

I don't deny that my beard is gray
Only I haven't the faintest idea what for.
I forget. Don't assault me with your questions.

Well, maybe there have been some fine moments
In the middle of the slog––but see
I can't even name now those island beauties…

July 14, 2007

A Model of Gracefulness

You nimble-minded variety of man
Four arms linking twigs
Tinier and tinier, faster and faster
No legs to touch ground, never still
You would fall
I not only desire your move
But your build.

You would be a statue
Too late, too long, headlong
I'd covet you all the same
Fallen from that high
Into a model of gracefulness.

March 2, 2005

L'Aporie de l'Aphoriste

Lichtenberg, cet autre adorable bossu, des lumières
Voulut se faciliter les choses en élevant
Lui-même l'objet de ses désirs.

[Elévation - Aufhebung]

Arrivé au point de pouvoir servir, ledit objet s'effaça.

Lichtenberg en fut inconsolable
Mais, philosophe, il aurait dû le prévoir.

When quanta do the danza
He who observes swerves
The whirligig of their feet
Into naught but stampede.

[War es die jahrelange Beobachtung, die das Kleine
So beeinflusste, dass es ganz aus der Welt schied?
Sei mein, sagt ein witziger Mann, und ich möchte
Kein Aufhebens mehr um dich machen.]

November 25, 2007

Lit Heroes #5 - Quasimodo

Who do you think I am?
Not one split second did I delude myself.
Such a beautiful girl––do you think
I didn't know that I never could have her
With that bit of a lump in my back?

Ever since I can remember
That darn hunch tells me that these chicks are pretty thick
Albeit awfully tempting
And this one was tempting to such an extent…
Her immoderate silliness was nothing less than unexpected.

Ringing bells twice a day isn't quite an absorbing job;
There's masses of spare time off the chimes
And you start to have some weird ideas.
I didn't even tell that twat I was into her gorgeous boobs––
I simply failed to save her… and she was mine.

July 14, 2007

Overreading the Bible

There are as many Bibles as there are generations.
The Scriptures are supposed to be re-read by each.
Mishnaic

The trouble has always been that
Discerning simple ideas soft-focussed in the haze of precious
___________________________________________language
Or filtering unheard-of data out of commoner talk
Are two different jobs for there are converse codings
And only the last one's Ars poetica
And only the last one can be Bible.

You might find in the Sutras some obsolescence
And Targumic Aramaic isn't currently a mother tongue
But the crowd-perturbing fact is: there is too much simplicity
Looming through it, rather than esoteric automatic writing
It would be the chore of the learned, Benedictine labor
With––unkindly enough––scarce an image in it.

It's no ban, no adult subtlety, no puerile iconoclasm though, it's
___________________________________________just 'cause
Image in it but explains, states and expounds, elucidating
Neither willy nor nilly, yet as motivated as
Otherwise only a porn pic;
All this canonical stuff is an apron-clad housewife, plainly kind of
_____________________________________________ a chum
But nonetheless the only person knowing your kinks 'n tantras well
_____________________________________________ enough
To have satisfying sex with:

I am sort of resting for a spell in a tiny park
Smack dab in the middle of Metropolis
Stillness and by-oneselfness amidst the roaring midtown bustle

(––Do you remember Puy Mary, adamantly wrapped in snowfall
____________________________________________and fog?
You thought us lost in some Pamir, smelling near-death xp, you
__________________________________________were frozen
With fear, wailing and gnashing of teeth, inconsolable, en route to
__________________________________________your maker
And then this truck came along and we heard it honk and found
________________________________________________out
We weren't even a stone's throw away from the local highway:
If we'd been to die it'd have been no avalanche but this truck to
_______________________________________run us over––)

Me alone for a spell on this minuscule island thus.
And as if it where the most normalest thing in this world:
Here observing an ant crawling over a leaf
Here shaded by a Japanese maple
Here a piece myself of utterly made-up nature.
Herein between myself.

November 22, 2007

Lit Heroes #4 - Friday

Oh no, that's no name, it would be pointless.
It's a keyword he used when he was searching after me.
I preferred hearing that than hearing the sounds mangled.

I nevertheless tried to tell him, he was a friend after all.
Indeed, he was the first I have given those syllables.
We don't do it. We don't have to, our kinsfolk do know
And an alien mustn't for it confers fulsome influence.

But I told him and, as a faithful pal, even admitted
To being about to decrypt his in the potent language too.
He didn't even want to hear that.

I named him in front of me and he didn't pay attention.
I got fulsome influence over him but I wouldn't misuse.
For all the influence he could have had over me
He had spoiled it either by kindness
Or blatant ignorance.

July 13, 2007

A Tale of Male Delicacy

A nosegay of florets crammed into a hole
Is easily beaten by one made of flesh.
Compelled to decorate my soul
I naturally am a bit rash.

Too stirred to go out plucking daisies
I'd leave 'em where they gaudify
But what I stick into the vases
Won't wither, mowed away.

Mine fade and die by slight attention
But in an incarnadine flowerpot
Dainty corollas of venison
Do flourish quite a lot.

(At any rate, they must do
Expedients for barren a season––
I resort to those who wouldn't renew
Resisting and yet wrested from the freezer.)

November 21, 2007

Lit Heroes #3 - Narrator

When I get up too late, I won't sleep the ensuing night.
My breakfast, then, consists of a plump little pilgrim's shell.
Its citrusy smack entails a litany of complex explanations.

Morning is a starting point for complex explanations
While the morning light, that rather simple chap, that
Teenage lunk, drops in everybody's news.

I watch him coming but I don't say a word at table.
The darkness broke, am I less puzzled now?
I, grown into myself, ponder…

The day begins with funny day ideas.
I ought to cheerfully plunge into the bustle––
Could be also like bolting back into my burrow, huh?

It is strange, I'm not preparing for that.
I'm preparing for melancholy
And analysis.

July 13, 2007

Capriolo al Tartufo

Die große Katze, das edle Tier, scharrt nicht im Boden;
Nur elende Schnauzen durchstöbern den Dreck.
Bin ich ein Schwein, wenn ich nach Trüffeln schnüffle
Statt schlanker Schönheit aufzulauern?

Wir glauben dir nicht.
Was gedeiht schon im Dunkel?
Jene Knollen sind schlechterdings Beiwerk, zur Würze
Des einzig begehrten Wildes.

[L'ongle du beau félin
Ne gratte point la brousse ;
Est truffe de cochon
Qui à la truffe va.

Nous ne t'approuvons pas :
Dans l'ombre, rien ne pousse ;
Tes champignons ne sont
Qu'épice au ragoût fin.]

[Big puss
won't paw
but sow
snuffles truffles.

Those tu-
bers add
some zing
to lame game.]

November 20, 2007 Helle Zeit für Knollennasen

Lit Heroes #2 - Gulliver

Size is a lifetime problem.
The most dazzling issue is not
Whether I am too big or too small or precisely my size
––For I always fit into the size I'm supposed to be––
What really bamboozles me are those changeling volumes
_________________________________________everywhere.

I am personally not used to switching sizes.
If I can sway the lighting I can't bias the light––
My size is true and I am right.
Though I'd prefer to be even tinier at times…
And sometimes feel that even life-size I am taller than life.

Little buggers kind of scurry all around me
And a huge moron enjoys battering down my crown.
It scurries and it batters.
I have ants in my pants
While a colossus labors to scratch me away.

July 12, 2007

Certitude Makes Life Easier

Certitude makes life easier
Animals hunt by necessity
But to track down the quarry
Even a beast of prey needs to doubt.

I am beset by suitable doubt, for a while
Thinking I could debunk some
Of those throbbing miracles, they are
Responsible for the hardships I know.

But, why, should I thrive by the snout?
Whatever I get hold of emerges from buried.
There's a different stillness required
To conjecture the labor of hounds.

Qualm and calm tell at least one same thing:
Were this a chase I'd be long
Left behind, having grown latent prey
To most warily stashing away my own hide.

The comfy hideout I am galling in
Isn't a place of rest though, under shelter
Inert I must creep way more scared
Then, say, while I would run away.

Life is easy as long as I beat it;
It is most easy when I catch my breath
Panting for the pursuer's out of sight:
At this juncture I'd embrace nature itself

Feeling it pound on my side, soaked, puny
Distraught––I, expendable pillar in its center
Thus unattainable, unsought for myself
Quite as astray, am the middle of nowhere.

June 5, 2005 & November 19, 2007

Lit Heroes #1 - Quixote

Had you not tilted at them
Those giants most peacefully would have
Stayed what they are:
Giants grinding their bit without a thought.
Fairly out of your way then.

So long as you do not drive them into
Making use of their brains, awful enough
They'd be loath to ape a bunch of
Run-down windmills––and you
Certainly are on the sure side, knight valiant.

Do savor the day instead of taking
A daring peek at vane-glorious mills;
In times out of joint, windy moments
You better sow your wild oats
Without forthwith allowing for an all too floury outcome.

July 12, 2007

Sonnet After a Time

Life's harvest (if there be one) into ash
The summers burnt and nothing left, reap: zero
A barn forever void, you daylights hero
A sack long since run empty through its gash.

Am I a hamster with two pouching cheeks?
I hate and love myself as anyone
When I catch sight of me with mirrors, done
Somewhere he's left a track, that sack that leaks.

Who ever cares? The pigeons ate it up
They tuck in vomit, sputum, spooge in case–
To nourish the maroon no cream is base
Whatever the refuse to grab, it's crop.

Choice muck or offal trim, fruitlessly gone
Ashes and easy bones, groomed by the sun.

July 15, 2001

Merry Burial

Should winter bride in with her dower of chill:
A layer of white fits to cushion the hill
A coating of night fits to shelter the vale
Both skin grafts torn off ye fair bridegroom. Unveil

The share you're betrothed to: if grim, strewn with frost
Go, chip crusty hymen and hallow that host–
The shroud remains yours, just the maiden's a cheat
Albeit her oncoming dark no deceit.

Yet brickwork and tile make a coffin to house
In hideaway happy enough near that spouse;
A sickroom for shell far too frail to appease
Dejection will finally warrant your ease.

September 27, 2001 Atonement

On Greatness and Infinitude

Low-flying fowl, pigeon, vomit eater
Upon which pithily the pigeon eater pounces–
Plump twice, where is greatness in this world?

Like a shadow outlined, to be trodden by the quick
Driven onward across it another body of oblivion, this
Is the sole infinitude both might experience.

To fell honest loot, not a quarry bewildered nor that
Emaciated self, projected talon within the beak's reach,
Heaven, there is way to catch greatness or infinitude.

April 2, 2004

Things

Good things, bad things:
How to tell ’em apart?
The outcome? Of what? They are already.
By their fruits ye shan’t know them
Since actual things aren’t ideas at all.

August 1, 2007