TENNYSON: FINAL NOTES

Alfred's death book

the rhyme scheme sepulchral 

totalmente chiusa

but endlessly extensible

his grandsire: 'The Old Man of the Wolds'

vicar, laudanum fiend

slave to his compounds

and disreputable emulsions

his youngest sibling

opium fiend arising 

from the carpet to confess

'I am Septimus, 

    the vilest of the Tennysons'

but see 'grandsire', above

*

a grand style should be felt, never

conceived

Who reads Lucretius?

Who reads Lucretius now 

that AAH is dead?

death is uncuttable: know it

for a barren truth

'A strange scorn of love

a strange vehemence

and a high melancholy'

    (Santayana, 25)

dried up with him

and his ways

July 12

  

got tadpoles in the rain barrel

 

looks like 

we’re gonna have frogs

Toad with toadspawn and frogspawn in the background 

© Linda Pitkin2020VISION

WAKE UP AND LISTEN TO ME

wake up wake up

wake up rabbits

chickens and dogs

my mission was a bust

I got no coffee

I found no place to sit, got

nothing done

on this review which

why on earth did I agree to do?

Man what a scene.

 

Plus runes from folk horror movie

will not

cooperate not even for a second

runes with their enticements

and false trails

and sketchy referents

but you can't keep away they're like

potato chips

 

I drove around with no idea

I parked and sat in the car

trying to dream up a time and place

to do stuff in

minutes and seconds

were all in shreds

 

went into the grocery store

lost as fuck

got the last two ribs at the hot bar tho

6/18/25

THINGS THAT PILE UP 6/21/25

 

laundry and dirty dishes (which I include 

merely so you'll know

I'm from earth)

regrets

fractions

deaths

plastic containers

exclamation points and cat complaints

busted implements

snatchings

executive orders 

and violent speeches

    from sphincter-mouthed commander

fractal structures

devoid of syntax!

clippings

rabbits, fat little rabbits

emails

unfarted farts (think I'm joking?)

missing plastic containers

cigarette butts

    in the hollow of an old oak

    in our forest

        where of a morning I renew

        that regrettable habit

regrettable habits

poetry books

drafts

the piles of weeds and dead flowers

    that are the signs

    of Molly's relentless gardening

today we bombed Iran

INTO THE ASS OF NICHOLAS

the least an American poet can do 

at this juncture

is flirt with ultimate 

disaster

if we speak now with the care and precision

that has been our care

we'll find our voice

indistinguishable

from the plague of sound

that swarms through everything

by now the distinctions 

we would make between ourselves

and the national psychopathology

are irrelevant

in this mortal time our voice

is no more our own 

than our clothes, cars

and computers

even our deepest secrets

and our greatest loves

and our worst regrets

 are laughable

we can only cry out

so that even the dying king

will hear our caterwauling

(should he happen to be dying)

no time to make it slick or edgy

or even funny

forget literary

nor can it be charged 

with irony

that privilege is extinct

even though, and note this, detachment 

is absolutely paramount

the work will be, as it can only be

grotesque, embarrassing

obvious

plain and sick

but it will be hot

i mean dangerously hot

like Absolon's coulter

between the time he took it from the forge 

    of Gervase

and when

with all his hate

unraveling 

he plunged it

into the ass of Nicholas

THANKS FOR THE REMINDERS

 

Thanks for the reminder

about the randomness of the real,

the reality of the unseen

and for reminding me of

the ambiguity of predicates,

the illegitimate nature 

from any philosophical point of view

of categories

which I had completely forgotten

and of the grudgelessness

of nature

that distance = depth

that laws are easily broken

and of the stealth

of objects in flight

MAXIMS I

 

burnout is real    heads melt

research agendas    blow away

like sea foam    everyday tasks

freeze bones    guts are exposed

teeth bite down    on nothing

infantile habits    and fixations

animate ragged bodies    and occupy

raw and stinging    brains

at unspecific intervals    alas

emails land in your box    like grenades

friends are like     what's up?

and you tell them    and then they are like

oh

TOXIC ATMOSPHERIX, or THANKS A LOT

skimming the soft outer surface

    of our soft-headed sphere

crowding channels

glutting overhead streams

pulsating devil-talk

falls to earth

it is an irritant

even as it is, yes I know, 

a mere toxic return

of our own red-hot

undisclosed tumores

with no more space up there

the inner spheres are quickly flooded

with sweaty vapor

the roar that fills your ear is precisely

the space-junk verbiage

of the general harangue 

choked at its cognitive limit

now

that irritant invades

all speech

hurts heads

makes assholes burn

and worms itself into dreams

and now becomes the burden

of the incorruptible song

of birds

if you will listen: 

the mockingbird (mimus polyglottos)

even now recites

with clear voice and wide-awake sarcastix:

‘thanks a lot

  thanks a lot

thanks a lot

you dumbfucks

thanks

    a

        lot'

no one knows 

    no warrior

    no wise-man in hall

how long 

it will take the mimus

to forget that song

PERPETUAL NERONIA

 

ill deposits of tooth

and bone

 

turgid tongue, a ripening

assemblage of death

 

and a wilderness

of wasted flesh

 

to gorge the great sarcophagus

FOR MARIO STEFANI

Solitudine non é esser soli

é amore gli altri inutilmente.

 

Note to self: save Venice

by throwing self in canal.

No! No such canal.

 

Bells twitchy this morning

pigeons

a pain in the ass to all.

 

And the constant unterhhuptions!

Let me drink a tea

to make everything fall into place

fail into place

step off into space

I’m afraid 

of my head

afraid of my stomach

afraid of my feet, always

looking up at me like little dogs.

 

Too many voices

too many unfamiliar dogs

too many ribbed vaults

crawling with heads!

 

My apartment: wreckage in every room

the atmosphere is cloudy, a mess

Venice is fucked:

fine.

Three cheers

for anyone

who ever thought otherwise

 

*

Detective on the scene (voice-over):

Was the suicide a suicide

or a murder-suicide wherein

from three chairs

the bodies were all enfolded

and involved

into a ball

suspended on a chain

from the ceiling

like a censer? And,

truly, what will become of Venice?

Of all of us?

STAN'S LETTER

 

Stan's letter

weighs on my mind

the world is too full of sorrow

and fathers too full

of forgetfulness

and more than his letter could have hoped

or attempted

to express

but this correspondence falls to me

where far from his son

Stan's new dreams begin

literary criticism

is still already at work

I cannot tell him this

departure from the anarchy of my sphere

will come at a cost

but a cost

    and for a benefit

that benefits no one

but it's too late now

for me to recommend 

to Stan the benefits I have found

in the receding confines of my dream

(still the old dream)

where my sons 

I fervently hope (for such is my plan)

can always find me dreaming

And a sane man will have none of them

 

a paraphrase of Tao Te Ching 24

If you stand on tiptoe

pretty soon you’re just teetering: try it.

When you’re all in a hurry

you never get anywhere.

Trying to make yourself a star

your light flickers low.

When you try hard to make an impression on people

sane ones lose interest.

Trying to be the boss

you dwell in chaos.

If there is some reason for you to be here

be honest about it,

do that thing

and then stop.

NEW KIN

Your kinship with the insane 

when once you learn of it

will put your shit list 

into brutal perspective

your stomach will never be the same

carrion-brain

weird leisure, shining forms 

twisted into vague ideals,

activity impersonating life

and practicing myriad ills

among your kinfolk:

expressionless

clan of leisurely monsters

with no recollection of anything good

SERMO THOMAS AD PABLONEM

 

Good grief, Pablo

your insane gifts are freaking me out

my mind since I gave up preaching is

as you know tenderly susceptible

to all gestures

& also material objects in the form

of petits cadeaux, and especially

the Waylon Jennings album (you know it for my favorite)

the biography of the anarchist

these have shaken me at the atomic level

from which as Lucretius teaches us

everything flows

from exiguum clinamen

to magnum opus

it is good that I gave up preaching

who knew it lay so deep in my genetics?

But was it not Ebenezer Crofts who 150 years ago

came all the way from Kent

to Texas that he might give,

as he taught us, "full vent to my preachments"?

Not an ignoble reason to relocate

but still, for me, now, unworkable

in poetry

that that coin finally dropped

gaudeamus igitur

am I right?

no Pablo: no more preaching for me

it's all prophecy now

WHAT IS A POET LIKE

a poet is like

a geiger counter

one isn't sure

is working properly 

THE COMING WEIRDNESS

 

everyone will have to gather strength

where they can

wiles and defenses if you do not have them

must be learned

you may not see me

for days at a time I'll be gone

but this should not in the least

be of any concern:

though I have no strength

nor any skills to speak of

it's OK 

until i can make it back 

i promise

i can breathe this air

i know my way around

and as for survival, fear me not:

my self-loathing has never let me down

TOMORROW

 

“To those who do not know that the world is on fire, I have nothing to say.”

--Bertolt Brecht 

the sky will burn a pale sunset 

for your national epic

painted in broad strokes

executed

with you in mind 

beginning in bland strokes

like a chemical burn

whose origin and gradual spread

at first

you'll barely discern

you'll go on sensing nothing in fact

until it's hard to tell

if it’s dawn, or sunset, or noon

or hell

and then you’ll feel something:

look for it soon

because it will be scorching even 

the eastern horizon

TODAY

revelation always interrupted 

by dropping of darkness

or another distraction

in a maze of fading

possibilities

 

ORACULUM NEGATUM

 

Instead of perfume there will be rottenness;

and instead of a girdle, a rope;

and instead of well-set hair, baldness;

and instead of a rich robe, a girding of sackcloth;

instead of beauty, shame.

Your men shall fall by the sword and your mighty men in battle.

And her gates shall lament and mourn;

ravaged, she shall sit on the ground.

Isaiah 3.24ff

 

 

But that won’t happen to me

no

that will never happen to me

 

the campaign has just begun

it's the first day of spring

and I'm immortal

 

HISTORY LESSON

 

we have been sowing 

and living in

such garbage garbage

for so long

and subject for so long

to dodgy cartoons

bad sound

and jerky animation

characters clearly insane

voiced by vaguely familiar voices

to say nothing of the iffy coloration

all relieved only by commercial breaks

gouging us

on many levels

 

the world’s too sad to be reported

dreaming wiggling children

smile from far away

from far too far away

but not too far away

 

we watched tv

and went to sleep

others loaded amnesiac bullets

for sleepless bastards

who died allover the world for our precious                  freedoms

but you know

they were very low-utility freedoms

 how can ordinary human behavior

result in so much pain?

too bad for you

empires die like suns

trying to vomit I see only stars