Haunted bed! Or is it in his head?

Nocturne

My bed calls to me, a bouquet
of white roses wrapped in fresh sheets,
sun-white and window-warmed.

Like a cod from the deep I am hauled to bed;
its rumpled buttocks welcome me.

I am drawn to bed by the scent of softener;
its hungry linen mouths my skin.


II

Clown-faced and innocent
my bed came to me,
grieving over the lost gravity
of my body.

Its button eyes wept over my heels’
impression in the carpet,
its stripes grew crooked with jealousy
at my pajamas’ pant legs.

“You’re too small,” I said,
“my feet hang over your edge
like drying fish.”

“You’re too flat,” I said,
“for me to conform to you
the way you do to me.”

“You’re too soft,” I said,
“I sink into you like a stone
in a bowl of oatmeal.”


III

My bed misses me and I am afraid.

I hear its anxious springs creaking at night.

There is nothing quite like me to fill its emptiness.


(published in Big Bridge)


This poem is the 12th in the manic section of Sine Wave. The world has become more plastic for the speaker and ultra-personalized, so that he actually believes he is important to the bed. In truth this is the speaker's delusion of grandeur expressed as paranoia, making him more important than he is.

After all the white imagery in the poem's first section, a provocateur posted this in the comments today:


I Bled for C.E. and T.S.!

Last night in my computer room,
trying to print out his major
opus on Eliot's Four Quartets
but realised I lacked enough
paper to fully regurgitate
if from my new HP, I fed
in more leaves, jammed the HP,
got a paper cut! Damn! Now I've
bled for C.E. & T.S.: Four Quarts
for Their Bloody Four Quartets!!!

--Christopher T. George

This may be true up to the volume of blood. If you lost a gallon suddenly you'd die of shock. But if you were bled slowly, very gradually to say 40% of your former hematocrit you could still walk, although you'd move like an old hound dog.

Why Christopher was so eager that I post his response in the body of my blog I don't know, maybe he's running for office or pursuing celebrity. All I know is that this has something to do with Jack the Ripper. As for my essay on Four Quartets , I'll mail it to anyone who wants it. The $25 amazon.com gift card prize (The inaugural "CE Has to Pay to Be Read")for reading it in its entirety has still not been claimed four months after its posting.

If I don't blog for a while it's because my computer's in the shop. Word has started to decay with antivirus pop-ups. I blame Norton Internet Security for fucking up the software. That program has been nothing but trouble for me, slowing applications like molassas. When I try to thin start menu programs the computer warns me that dire consequences will follow so I always chicken out.

"Don't Look Back," which I posted Friday? was solicited by an editor and I was happy to comply. It's a great thing to be wanted, to be able to skip the audition. I can't think of a time I've turned down a solicitation. I've always felt they were an honor.

I think I mentioned "The Deprivathon" found a home at the venerable Ygdrasil and should appear in its entirety in August. Turns out I was published in Ygdrasiil twice before the new millenium, so here's another link to Ygdrasil.

Didn't catch a fish today but it was beautiful. Kathleen and Kenyon lay down on the peninsular bluff on a navy blue blanket together, soaking some rays. By the speech of the infinite ocean, the jade-blue mother of us all, I cast my line and watched three seals at play.


Still at 2 kilobunnies,

CE