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