GREEN-EYED LADY

 

We painted the bathroom green-eyed lady

and honestly

heartland frost or even kelp

would have been better:

green-eyed lady is a tad too swampy

like a yogurt lid

pulled out of a pond

 

man that reminds me it’s time to clean the filter

in the turtle pond I’ve been putting it off

for days Rex acquired this turtle in 2015

and himself excavated the pond

and the turtle is going strong

she could outlive us all!

but then who would change the filter

 

maybe I should introduce a catfish

to that environment

find me a real monster

 

LET IT IN

come on fellow citizen

it’s time to let the evil in

best to do it now

 

once it's in

you’ll feel like the boss of everything

it will teach you survival

improve your debating skills

and free you up for the fight

 

the weak will fear you

the strong will nod

in your direction

 

do it now

while it’s optional

would be my advice

 

TRAINING

Stop:

whatever you have been doing up to now

must be considered training

emergencies that present will be

nonsense upheavals

and many bads without explain

in plain speech, impossible situations

but there will be one or two

especially designed

to be met by you

 

The trick will be to remember your training as training

rather than merely a lifetime

of appetites, desires, random errors, regrets,

futile job-related exertions, and stretches

of badly planned downtime

 

I repeat, stop what you’re doing:

time to review your training

is now complete

I regret to say

that is all

the training

history

has left us time for

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 AHH 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