Monday, July 24, 2006

Faux Photographer Apprehends and Displays Naked Woman: Poem, "In Your Hands."

Today's poem is the tenth in the manic half of Sine Wave and the 36th poem in the ms. It's also one of my personal favorites, though to explain that would ruin the poem.



In Your Hands

The desert two-lane flashes
its white segments so fast
you forget the asphalt discontinuities
and think the dashes connected
toward some future rendezvous
where night and morning join
in a secret sunrise of stars
that explains all the causalities
that propelled you here—
but your eyes are sucked back
to this moment, furious and finite
as a fly seizuring against a screen.

The yellow smears on your windshield
are souls you’ve hurt without knowing.
The whistle through the window
is your suspicion of yourself.
The radio plays country
because you really are that simple.

When it’s time to pull over,
you are no closer to but no farther
from your goal. In a waking sleep
you imagine topiaries of exhaust
in the shapes of visionaries:
Jesus, Blake, Jules Verne.
Were they just as rooted to the moment?
Or did they veer off in the underbrush?
The wheel is in your hands.


(published in eclectica)

**********************

Yesterday our neighbor, "I'm Not Creepy," was noted at dusk on his outdoor patio in only a white towel, while a naked young woman ran out his door and back several times. She was, well--very good looking, her body athletic without losing the requisite curvature.

I poked my head out the door to say, "Is everything OK?" Mike (INC) said, "Fine. Come, meet my girlfriend" (was standing outside naked at the time). But instead of greeting me, she ran back inside. I heard no shouting or signs of distress.,

The woman could not have been over 25, while Mike "I'm not creepy" is on Medicare, pot-bellied, with sticks for arms and stringy white hair streaming from his scalp in two big patche--like Larry from The Three Stooges. Mike's socially impaired and Kathleen and our neighbor, Noel, swear he stinks almost all the time from body odor. (Being over a foot taller than he, I haven't noticed.) So how does he snag a hot chick?

We think Mike's scam is as follows: He seeks out young female hitchikers and asks them if they'd like to come home and pose for some "artistic" photographs. And he, no doubt, has to get close to the subject for the sake of art.

Usually in a photographic session the photographer keeps his clothes on, yes?

****************************

I hiked five miles yesterday with Kathleen, brutal climb near the end.

But I pigged aoout last night and lost any advantage from the exercise.

Still, careful observers may have noted that I lowered my weight from 270 to 260 in my profiel.

Mood holding--I can tell because I irritate Kathleen now.


Thine in Poetry and Adventure,

CE

5 comments:

  1. Anonymous5:57 PM PDT

    I've read that poem before CE and recall it rather vividly. Yes, a good one indeed.

    take care
    Norm

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks, Norm. The best poems, I think, come almost hypnagogically--a waking dream of inspiration if you will, no opium dream like "Kubla Khan," perhaps, but pretty damn close. This is one of those poems that wrote itself before I had time to ruin it.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Your use of the senses in these lines draws me inside the poem. There’s a range of imagery here, both marvelous and harrowing, that is effective. The vivid presence evident in the following lines gives me a case of writer's envy:

    in a secret sunrise of stars
    that explains all the causalities

    but your eyes are sucked back
    to this moment, furious and finite
    as a fly seizuring against a screen

    The whistle through the window
    is your suspicion of yourself

    topiaries of exhaust
    in the shapes of visionaries:
    Jesus, Blake, Jules Verne.

    The writing stays with the reader after the last line is finished. Good poem.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I see that you are "bouncing back." ;-)

    ReplyDelete
  5. Thanks much for the kind words about the poem. Especially Anon's confession of envy, an experience I share towards the work of many poets. Here's a short poem that has always blown me away:

    Keeping Things Whole

    In a field
    I am the absence
    of field.
    This is
    always the case.
    Wherever I am
    I am what is missing.

    When I walk
    I part the air
    and always
    the air moves in
    to fill the spaces
    where my body's been.

    We all have reasons
    for moving.
    I move
    to keep things whole.

    -- Mark Strand

    ReplyDelete

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