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Note 71: What do you do?

June 7, 2009 – 2:21 am

For Holly Friesen

From a corner deli on the northwest corner
of 41st and Lex for a couple of years
the southeast corner of the Chanin Building
I carried lunches, in bags, in a row along
my left arm, swimming through noonday
crowds, a dolphin in a crush of tuna,
catty-corner, e.g. the Chrysler building
across the 42nd street intersection
with the exquisite custom wood
elevator doors no two the same, and the
very watchful staff of doormen
who force all deliveries to the freight
elevator. My (meager) income was
directly proportional to the number of
lunches I delivered during a 2-hour period
so refused to wait for the freight elevator
always pretending that I worked for
the company to which I was delivering,
bringing my own lunch back to the office.

I was 23 years old.

One time (not the only time by a long shot,
aside from the most attractive details) a
very shapely, well dressed and coiffed
fashionable woman in her early 30s
asked me what it was that I really did.
I really deliver lunches, I said.
“No, ” she said, I mean what are you?”
I’m a man who delivers lunches.
“Are you an actor?”
No, I deliver lunches.

She gave me a $5 tip, 5x the usual.

And now, when someone asks me
“what do you do?” I reply that I’m in charge
of technology for a division of a bank
that more resembles a small professional
corporation than a bank and is essentially
a financial consulting firm to public agencies
as clients, the staff a creamy selection
of mostly Ivy League post graduate degrees
but also Berkeley and other UC campuses
mostly MBAs, and good people every one of them.
Except me. I don’t have a college degree.

That’s what I do.

Sometimes I ask myself what I really do.
The answer is always ambiguous.
I can never put a stake through its heart.
So I always lie about what I do
because I don’t know what the truth is.

Since I’m lying anyway, and looking back
I see that I was just too stupid to see that
a very successful and beautiful older woman
in the Chrysler Building, New York City,
my new home, my Canterbury, might actually be
interested in me; to get things started
I only needed tell a different lie,
one that represented how I felt about
myself instead of how I pseudo-objectively
fit into the economic system and said,
“I’m a poet,” she would likely have interacted
further with me in ways that may have been
enjoyable for both of us: it may even have
become apparent to me, who had (?) never
been able to accept that someone might
actually be interested in me without some
philosophical proof or at least demonstration.

So I sometimes also lie the another way.

I’m a poet.

By dirk | Also posted in Poems | Comments (1)

Note 69: Reboot

May 29, 2009 – 8:01 pm

It is undone business
I speak of, this morning
with the sea
stretching out
from my feet
~Charles Olson, The Maximus Poems, “Maximus to Himself”

The way the perceptual field seems to shift
the ground/figure as laid out by Fritz Pearls
read many, many years ago, in New York City
as I recall it from what I see now

in rapid and constant engagement and change
nothing to stand on
no one to hold on to
even a distant siren is supplanted

at moments by the group
of finches
on invisible branches
of indiscernible trees

now within a
direct encounter
and the sudden appearance of a
washed out brick red

White Freightliner on a mostly
residential street, flexing power
with the dull silver towed trailer
to the accompaniment

of some “classic rock”
I can’t quite place
a few houses over
and across a different street;

to live at a crossroads
always aware
of perpendicular directions
with hampered peripheral vision,

knowledge the shadow of a shade
understanding as fixed and certain
as heaving tides
30 miles inland, under a walnut tree.

1.

Have always been an alone one,
good at
touching, not easily
touched.

But it’s the touching itself
of you
that touches me

usually sincere
but always false.

Yet

if I let you
touch me

a pond, a cellophane mirror
as your finger distends the
surface of loosely cohered molecules

and I see it press in,
from underneath I see it,
lying at the bottom
and see the tip
of your left index finger press
down and the surface stretch
before you even get wet.

Already it’s no longer what it was
when you wanted to touch it
even though it hasn’t
yet
touched you back.

Knowing that your mind
has turned toward me
that I’ve occupied
your attention
inflames me
to occupy
more of you.

2.

Always along the circumference
even when drawn
into and accepted in
the center
not simply
out of fear
but not from courage either

just the way the
object model(
of an artificial intelligence that learns
<from experience>)

CAN NEVER (find itself in experience
OR
reprogram the code)
//currently running in process

Caution:

Terminating the process
to reverse engineer it
can cause the system to become
unstable.

  
This won’t affect the wind
in new leaves
of the walnut tree
but it will change
the way
you perceive them.

you might even chop it down.

No telling( a result)
if you actually

TERMINATE: SOCIAL PROCESS;
REBOOT INTO (instructionless space.
By dirk | Also posted in Poems | Comments (0)

Note 56: River Memories

April 23, 2009 – 9:26 pm

That year we picked pears and apples
on a tremendous orchard along the banks
of the Columbia River; geese in
< formed flocks patrolled along the
water from the sky; forty minutes
along badly kept dirt tracks by car
just to reach the nearest paved road,
which was still somewhere within
the Colville Indian Reservation.
I don’t remember the names
of the of the nearest town or
any other nearby town.

He was several years older than I,
heavily bearded, shorter than I,
maybe 5’10 or 5’11, but stockier,
not in fat, but in build. Neither of us
ate enough and we both walked a lot.
He had been in the infantry,
Army, in Viet Nam.
Don’t remember how we met,
or where. But we started walking
together. I wrote a lot of poems,
he drew a lot of pictures. We
didn’t talk much, but we understood
one another very well.

From small town to smaller town, each with a
small sack and notebook, nothing else,
no bedding, though we both had light jackets,
when we arrived in town, we would walk
straight to the police station, introduce
ourselves, and ask for permission to sleep
in the park. We were never refused.

We lived very frugally, but were
running out of the little we had. We
decided to pick peaches, delicious
Washington State peaches.

On the way to the peaches, we were
taken in for the night by a man
who went to prison for 3 years
for refusing to go to Viet Nam.

We drank a lot of beer.
The tension between my friend
the vet and my new-found friend
the conscientious objector, was
all inside of my own mind but
it overwhelmed me and I wept.

They didn’t laugh at me. Instead,
we took the jail bird’s catamaran
out onto the late September
mountain lake, where he taught
me how to sail in the starlight
with only a sliver of a moon.

Once we’d harvested a farmer’s orchard,
once we’d eaten tree-ripened peaches all day,
had a cabin as a home for a week
and since we had money,
we decided to hitchhike to Alaska
through Canada. A young Chemist
heading for Vancouver picked us up.

What a lucky break!!
Customs approached.
“I don’t know these two!!” he said
emphatically, pointing at us,
“picked them up hitch-hiking.”

They have us stand aside, but still close,
and take and search our bags.
One says, “do you smoke marijuana?”
Our driver says, “no”.
They begin searching his car. One says,
“I found some marijuana seeds. Do you
smoke marijuana?” to which our driver
replied indignantly, “My brother must
have dropped them. I’ll kill him.”
Then they find more, then more,
he admits that maybe he tried it once
a very long time ago, at a party.

It went like this for a while.

Then they begin to open the trunk.
Our driver, “never mind, I’ll show you,”
pulls aside a tarp revealing many bricks
of marijuana, each probably a kilo.

Then they turn to us, having found
nothing in our bags. “Have you
ever smoked marijuana?”
I: yes. My friend: yes.
“When?”
I (looking at my friend): Wasn’t it
about a month ago?
My friend: or maybe five weeks.
They officially deported us:
for “Moral Turpitude.”

So we didn’t make it to Alaska.
But if we hadn’t been deported
I never would have had the pleasure
of meeting a particular young woman,
a graduate student in Anthropology
at Washington State University,
a little older than I but not much
with whom I traveled for a while.

Nor waking up before dawn to run
naked and barefoot down the dirt
tire tracks through the frost to the
river just turning slate
blue in first light with tight flocks
of Canadian Geese singing their
migrating music in tight groups,
shivering uncontrollably as I ran
to dive off a floating pier into
the Columbia River and swim
fully concentrated, stroking hard
and fast, as fast as I could, against
the stream until I couldn’t take
any more to float back
the little distance to the pier,
to  run back to the bunk house,
and a hot shower.

Even my friend thought it was
going overboard to do this every day;
the other men mostly laughed at me
and the women seemed even
to like the idea.

But now it’s a moot question.
The Chief Joseph Damn
was built right there and
I’ve heard that
it buried the orchards
under a lake.

I wouldn’t go back there anyway, though.
That farmer was a real asshole.

#twitpoem #pmppd (poetry month poem per day) poem 23

By dirk | Also posted in Poems | Comments (1)

Note 47: ‘<'the title blew away'>‘

April 14, 2009 – 6:22 pm

Wind casts light things into wild disarray
changing the very meaning of lightness
it rises up and blows Bending the Bow
off my table, plunk, and even jangles
the heavy bronze-slat Tibetan chimes
while it sends the pretty little gamelan bells
into paroxysms of symphonic dismay
and newly gathered piles of leaves
spring suddenly up into the air, then
after a chaotic and dust-storm like dance
suddenly drops a register so that
all the blown fragments precipitate out
the gamelan becomes merely lively
and the austere Tibetan nearly mute.

#twitpoem #pmppd (poetry month poem per day) poem 14

By dirk | Also posted in Animals, Poems, prosody | Comments (0)

Note 8: This Morning

September 25, 2008 – 9:34 am

(Version zero)

We reach out with both hands across an unbridgeable chasm
For the single crimson rose we feel will dispel the night.
Seeming to smile, nodding in a gentle breeze, does it
Invite us to take it and use it as our means of escape?

Through an assembly of machines and techniques,
Cantilevers, struts, cables, and pure will we span
The uncrossable deep to embrace both petal and thorn.

At first touch, the bloom seems to glow yet more brightly
As though a sun suddenly thrust its torch above
A distant horizon at midnight.

But this need to consume, to acquire, to possess
Lime-like leaches pigment from each petal, bleaching
Night, dawn, star, and flower to dull grey overcast
Where our beloved suffocates and struggles to get free.

And so it goes, again and again.
The sterile room, the unguents, the needles, the jars;
Quodidian reek of disinfected surface projected
Into seconds, minutes, hours, days…
By a longing that flickers in a loose bulb.

We hack at the undergrowth.
We cast nets.
We finger the warm deep of eternity.
Variety swirls about us.
We feel poor.

We think, if only, just once, just one
Good meal to lift me out of this hunger
That would be enough. I would be happy.

The dissonant instruments,
The bright green,
The wind on a bridge,
Sand dunes of garish goods on display,
A lofty jest of Baudelaire,
The red light from candles,
And a bay
Set up harmonic vibrations
Electric arcs across the bases of our spines
Giving birth through occipital foramen
To ephemeral spirits of bliss.

By dirk | Also posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)

Pindar Preferred

August 31, 2008 – 7:10 pm

During all this time, over 50 years, I never read Pindar in Greek. Well, I didn’t take my first year of Greek until I was 24. But, damn, that was around 30 years ago. It’s about time I got off my ass. Oh, well, I put Pindar aside long ago, for two reasons, neither of them very good given my own orientation toward poetry. The first was the occasional subject matter of his odes. The Greeks loved sports, I don’t. But the Odes aren’t really so much about the sport. Also, Pindar makes it perfectly clear that he believes that the athlete and patron will only be known in the future because they were smart enough to hire a poet to sing their praises. But the flavor put me off long ago.

The other reason is my perception that Pindar’s language was inflated. I believe that I got some of this from Pound, but I’m not sure. If I did, I don’t remember where or when (probably long before I learned greek). The other source is translations. He IS a bit “flowery.” Flowery was not a Modernist ideal. Nor is it my ideal. On the other hand, the language is VERY highly controlled. It is not loose. And besides, it was written on spec.

I always thought I wanted to know the Greater Asclepiad in verse. Well, it is truly lovely. And now, Finally, I read a Pindar Ode in Greek and scanned the verse. Since I’m a linguistic weakling, I began with the Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics Pindar: Victory Odes. The selection and commentary by M. M. Willcock is designed to progress from easier to more difficult. Though I considered doing otherwise just out of pride, in the end I went with Olympian 11 because it’s the shortest (20 lines), because it’s the simplest (comes first in the selection) and because I like it. It’s also important to some critical debates about Pindar.

Because I didn’t want to steal Wilcock’s edition, and because it was easier, I used the open source Perseus edition of the poem for what appears below. First, the translation, which I include below to relieve the Perseus servers. The translation’s not mine, but from Perseus, I may translate it, though, later):

Olympian 11
For Hagesidamus of Western Locri Boys’ Boxing 476 B. C.

[1] There is a time when men’s need for winds is the greatest, and a time for waters from the sky, the rainy offspring of clouds. But when anyone is victorious through his toil, then honey-voiced odes [5] become the foundation for future fame, and a faithful pledge for great deeds of excellence. [7] This praise is dedicated to Olympian victors, without stint. My tongue wants to foster such themes; [10] but it is by the gift of a god that a man flourishes with a skillful mind, as with anything else. For the present rest assured, Hagesidamus son of Archestratus: for the sake of your boxing victory, [13] I shall loudly sing a sweet song, an adornment for your garland of golden olive, [15] while I honor the race of the Western Locrians. There, Muses, join in the victory-song; I shall pledge my word to you that we will find there a race that does not repel the stranger, or is inexperienced in fine deeds, but one that is wise and warlike too. For [20] neither the fiery fox nor loud-roaring lions change their nature.

But the music… I’m practicing reading this ode aloud in Greek. When I think it’s good enough, I’ll record it and put it up here. But for now, here’s a scanned version of the poem. The Greek alphabet is very easy, but if you prefer a transliteration, view the poem on perseus and set the “Greek Display” to “Latin Transliteration.” With that as a guide, you can see how the scansion works. The movement of the verse is divine even though they say that this isn’t one of his better poems metrically, though Willcock points out that the practice of the verse, though from later in the early period, is more like Pindar’s later work. Also, if you’re interested, there’s a good discussion by Nagy of Pindars meters. Above the poem is a key to the Dactylo-Epitrite meter used in the poem (blurry for now, but I’ll replace it later).

[caption id="attachment_302" align="alignleft" width="500" caption="Pindar, 11th Olympian Ode"]Pindar, 11th Olympian Ode[/caption]
By dirk | Also posted in Music, Plants, Poetry, prosody, Scatter Pattern, Uncategorized | Comments (0)

the cows

February 24, 2005 – 9:21 pm

On oak and grass hillsides
heifers graze in warm sun
a stray cloud cooling the hide
in a rural northwest afternoon.

As I pull out at 4 am
cattle trucks sneak by in the dark
empty
to neighboring farms.

Oak and grass meander
to sharp hammers and guns
in one sheet metal rattle
of a 50 foot truck.

By dirk | Also posted in Animals, Poems | Comments (0)

death in petaluma 02/18/05

February 18, 2005 – 9:00 pm

You can’t spend what you ain’t got
You can’t lose what you ain’t never had.

(Muddy Waters)

It’s 12:09 pm. I got up at 10 am, got a cup of coffee, gave Luna our black cat some medicine, and telecommuted to the office. It’s a grey day, but the tree-covgered hills are shrouded in mist, the rolling hills are bright green with grasses, crows and woodpeckers are making their noises, and roosters are crowing.

Last night I left the office at 9 pm and hit the end of the parking lot on 101 because of a police investigation into a fatal crash deemed to be criminal. It took about two hours to get through and I didn’t get home until 2 am, an hour before I usually get up. But it was merely an inconvenience for me. I didn’t die.

My feeling that drivers of Ford Explorers and late-model Jeeps tend to be assholes was confirmed by one of each of them switching lanes and tail-gating in front of me when the average speed was about 3 miles per hour and there was nowhere for anyone to go – and they were the only cars I saw doing that at all over nearly 2 hours.

I was listening to a new (to my collection) Blind Willie McTell CD the other day while driving through Santa Rosa. I heard:

Cigarettes is my rite
Whiskey is my creed.

I thought that was really great so I listened to it again. Turns out the song is different, it says

Cigarettes is my ruin
Whiskey is my crave

Oh well, I like it both ways, though cigarettes are definitely my rite, not sure if it’s Roman Catholic, High Anglican, Orthodox, Suni, or Nyingma (probably none — more likely some form of death worship), but lighting up a cigarette is definitely my favorite practice and rite. I wish that it weren’t so, but it is. Blind Willie didn’t like the situation, either, but there was nothing he could do about it.

By dirk | Also posted in Music | Comments (0)

Light on the Richmond Bridge 02/17/05

February 17, 2005 – 8:52 pm

This is the first blog entry.

At 6:03 this morning, according to the clock in my car, which is about 5 minutes slow, I saw light in the sky while crossing the Richmond Bridge from San Rafael driving toward Richmond and thence on to Oakland. It was a welcomed sight.Black-fingered dawn, since rain clouds radiated up in strips from the eastern still sunless horizon. I don’t recall Homer ever referring to the color of dawn as anything but rosy-fingered (which must also include radiating clouds from the horizon), but it sure wasn’t rosy-fingered this morning.

The first time I drove this commute, id est, Willits to Oakland, on December 20, 2004, I left at 5:00 a.m. It felt as though the sun would never come up again. That it would be dark forever. That morning, I first saw light on the bridge at somewhere around 7:30. It was a relief.

These days, I leave the house at about 4:00 a.m., sometimes a few minutes earlier and sometimes a couple of minutes later. Sitting in stalled traffic in Petaluma is not my idea of a good time. Leaving at 4:00 it rarely takes more than 2.5 hours. Leaving at 4:30 can often take 3.0 hours.

Going home has similar defects. If I walk out of the office by 2:30 p.m., I’ll usually get home by 5:30 (yesterday, I made it at 5:05). Walking out at 3:30 could keep me on the road until 7:00 or 7:30.

By dirk | Comments (0)