Belief and Poetry
After James M. Cain
The rumpled tenor
blinks. The sign
says EAT — blue
neon juice in
a flat black
dark where shadows
shine and hurt.
Maybe you are
there, maybe you
are not, motoring
up from Texas
with underwater thoughts
packed in a
green hatbox. Trees
at the Twin
Oaks Diner shaking
with their passion.
A lake surrounded
by blue curtains.
Bite me, Frank,
she says. As
the road tilts
up, they tumble
down in blood.
The tinfoil hero
dreams flying over
pines. Oh, town
absorbed in shadow,
the blond mad
king is driving
Yellow Cab from
Laguna Beach to
El Cerrito. It
happens every day.
On light-blind
water, surface gods
shatter yet hold
like metaphysics to
old chronologies where
rage can suddenly
matter. The lake
shakes twice but
only slightly spills.
Blood absorbs more
slowly, dulling as
it dries. One’s
concept of dimension
suffers challenge then.
The fence tends
limits, breaks linear
circles frozen as
a rope. Something
always happens; someone
nearly tells all
we might have
guessed. Rob Roy’s
blood plot defeats
effete evil. Leaves
surmount the wall
restricting other worlds
and fall to
pieces there. Eyes
blue as doll
shoes, she tells
the movie version
but swells, stops,
waits as Frank
kills Nick. A
cut or gully
ferned drops hard
into the dark
like Nick’s last
note. Each short
sentence is mildly
elegiac as death’s
breezy manner, out
of breath just
now, drives with
both feet toward
endlessness and dinner;
where, after Oakland
falls, she’s silent
on the bed,
white lips pregnant.
Story needs such
heat freaked with
murder plans. Overheard
at home: I’m
in the death
house now, story’s
cousin chained to
truth and sleeping,
linking method and
comprehension in the
syntax of love
letters ever more
remote. This is
called fiction in
mother’s night garden
wet with sun.
After Cora dies,
it all goes
blooey. Angels are
heard to weep
every fifth sentence.
At the Desiring Vine
- after Elizabeth Willis
He who hesitates always gets lost.
Postmodernism disrupts tradition.
A rolling stone gathers no moss;
necessity is the mother of invention.
Postmodernism disrupts traditions
like “half a loaf is better than none”
and “necessity is the mother of invention.”
Shadows passing through imagined pavilions
are less than a loaf but better than none.
We stage the event in an infinite circle
where the towers of imagined pavilions
are indelible, mortal, and eternal.
Caught within an infinite circle,
everyone gets a video erection —
indelible, eternal, and immortal.
History lacks mass media protection.
When everyone gets a video erection,
a video condom constructed of lead
provides the needed media protection
from graphic images, living and dead.
A video condom constructed of lead
says: Handsome is as handsome does.
Graphic images, living and dead,
grow in the postmodern video garden.
Handsome is as handsome does,
says Nam June Paik, creating eye candy.
His postmodrn video garden grows
until the video cement hardens.
Nam June Paik says that eye candy
joins the elite and popular cultures.
But when the video cement hardens,
poetry’s rhetorical factory closes.
The elite and popular cultures
are joined like oil and blue water.
As the rhetorical factory closes,
poetry becomes voice-over narration.
We join like oil and water, but then
where are we? A story to tell but no telling.
Poetry becomes voice-over narration.
We get a movie from the slasher section.
Then where are we? A story to tell
about decaying gracefully, thank you.
The movies in the slasher section
are pure fiction, except in this country.
We’re decaying gracefully, thank you,
and shaky as a “trembling prairie.”
We’re pure fiction in this country,
where a perfect knowledge of grammar
might as well be a trembling prairie.
Playing classical music in a boom car,
we have perfect knowledge of grammar,
no story to tell but a way of telling.
Playing classical music in a boom car,
we drive into the cultural scenery,
no story to tell but a way of telling.
The future is blank, the page is written.
As we drive into the cultural scenery,
the eye is mild, the landscape persuasive.
The future is blank, the page is written.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
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