Without Reservations

I sit, alone at my table, tipping a tiny packet of sugar
into the tall glass of tea with a lemon on its lip
and wondering about life and death -
Whether it is really better after all to resist
cracking crème brûlée with a tiny spoon or
sprinkling extra salt on my potato -
which lies naked except for its yellow crown of butter.

Across the room, lobsters peer out of tanks with beady eyes,
waving their long feelers through the water.
And I know that I, too, am just shredding through life
with my giant claws, scuttling across the floors
of boiling seas – just waiting for some mighty diner
to call for me from the cosmic menu.

 

Dinner With T. S. Eliot – Revised

In the small café; a cramped Manhattan room,
The flowers, drenched in Chardonnay
Call out in dying blooms:

Flores.
Flores.
Flores para los muertos –

Ophelia joins them in their tomb,
And, sinned and damned- damned all already
We rattle ice cubes in our glasses,
Sipping straws like tubes to the seventh circle.

But let us not here think of this:
All the things amiss and missed -
The lettuce grown soggy;
My coffee cold,
And all once ripe now doomed and old.
Even now I stay and sit,
Reading Kafka bit by bit,
And a foul vermin crawls across the wall,
Watching the people one by one
zu ungeheure Ungeziefers verwandelt.

I remember now the soft fuzz of pubescent peaches;
The moss that grows from rotting beeches
(With roots that scratch at earth’s deep pocket) -
But let me now just be your prophet:
Three wenches, weaving within their hovel
Look at us then bend to looms and mutter,
You are nothing novel.
And now, with the threads been loosened,
They return to make us our nooses.

Und was ist mit mir geschehen?
Alles was ist ich kann kaum noch sehen.
No nightmare – hardly even a dream at all
Nor Eden nor fortunate fall nor paintings,
Crooked, hanging on a cracking wall –
More illusion than charm
More charm than encounter.

I feel your cosmic emptiness with my burning soul,
And leave my ashes on the pavement –

The hour’s glutted itself already;
The bells are ringing, and I move softly,
So my shadow, too, can make its statement;
That ghastly vision, writhing, too pained to stand –

Here, among floorboards,
it creaks and splinters, grows and cracks
As a naked light-bulb burns in the sky,
And we trade the moon for a discarded rind,
Thrown carelessly among the naked stars.

And no, no, you should not wait for me –
For all that’s living dies eternally,
And I, too, someday will go lateral,
Joining my spine to the warped wood of a Beckett casket,
Sending my soul downriver in a worn-out basket
made of Sticks.
This, my dear, is only natural.
But time has not yet come to that –
So enough grave talk for our little chat!

Instead, let’s go quietly about our books,
Quoting Chaucer with learnéd looks
And little smiles at a little wine,
Poured simply into the lips of fattened time.

 

Dinner With T. S. Eliot

In the small café; a cramped Manhattan room,
The flowers, drenched in Chardonnay
Cut, floating in crystal vases –
Call out in dying blooms:

Flores.
Flores.
Flores para los muertos –

Ophelia joins them in their tomb,
And, sinned and damned- damned all already
We rattle ice cubes in our glasses,
Sipping straws like tubes to the seventh circle.

But let us not here think of this:
All the things amiss and missed -
The lettuce grown soggy;
My coffee cold,
And all once ripe now doomed and old.
Even now I stay and sit,
Reading Kafka bit by bit,
And a foul vermin crawls across the wall,
Watching the people one by one
zu ungeheure Ungeziefers verwandelt.

I remember now the soft fuzz of pubescent peaches;
The moss that grows from rotting beeches
(With roots that scratch at earth’s deep pocket) -
But let me now just be your prophet:
Three wenches, weaving within their hovel
Look at us then bend to looms and mutter,
You are nothing novel.
And now, with the threads been loosened,
They return to make us our nooses.

Und was ist mit mir geschehen?
Alles was ist ich kann kaum noch sehen.
No nightmare – hardly even a dream at all
Nor Eden nor fortunate fall nor paintings,
Crooked, hanging on a cracking wall –
More illusion than charm
More charm than encounter.

And hey baby, don’t you know: you’re dangerous
And I like it?
I feel your cosmic emptiness with my burning soul,
And leave my ashes on the pavement –

The hour’s glutted itself already;
The bells are ringing, and I move softly,
So my shadow, too, can make its statement;
That ghastly vision, writhing, too pained to stand –

Here, among floorboards,
it creaks and splinters, grows and cracks
Reaching ever towards a safer ward for winter
When the dissonant chords will shake my mind,
And a naked light-bulb will burn in the sky
As we wait, misaligned and empty
For the thawing fill, and a moon:
Exchanged for the gnawed rind we’ve discarded,
Thrown carelessly among the burning stars.

And no, no, you should not wait for me –
For all that’s living dies eternally,
And I, too, someday will go lateral,
Joining my spine to the warped wood of a Beckett casket,
Sending my soul downriver in a worn-out basket
made of Sticks.
This, my dear, is only natural.
But time has not yet come to that –
So enough grave talk for our little chat!

Instead go quietly about your books,
Quoting Chaucer with learnéd looks
And little smiles at a little wine,
Poured simply into the lips of fattened time -
For death, as we know, is perhaps a myth;
Life is the kernel, and there’s the pith.

- E. M. Weaver, 10/22/08

N.B. I am currently studying Pound and Eliot, and, as a poetic exercise, I thought I would attempt a poem loosely inspired by their conceptions of poetry and incorporating some of their techniques. Since I am a greater lover of Eliot, his work had more of an influence; though he of course remains “il miglior fabbro.”

And, since so much of poetry is vocal:
Dinner with T. S. Eliot – 2.mp3

 

Poetry as Sensual Experience

Reading a poem is almost a sexual act: you lay it down, strip it, cast your eyes over its pasty body, and push inside – trying always to find new depths and new heights.

Poems like lotus blossoms,
clenching their angry fists
in the dark bloom of my mind.
I push inside,
unclench their nervous fingers,
interdigitate.

I can’t get deep enough, babe,
but I love you that much-
I’m trying.

 

Linguistics

Feeling the sunlight on my skin,
I hoist the mast on this word-vessel,
built long ago from cheap wood & sounds.
The cargo already loaded,
compass in hand -
I cut the lines at the dock-thought
as a windy meaning blows us
through blue-green sentence waves to port.

- 9/29/08

 

-

There was a block in Gotham where I walked
late summer through crouching tenements
and toothless men, jingling for change
thrown carelessly as the stars,
and a frantic breeze -
hiding; gone mad.

- 9/29/08

 

Aubade

Oh, Manhattan, I’m in love with you-
your sweat rising through the subway grates
in its pungent musk;
your freaks, your art.

I, too, am a freak-
I, too, will roam through stations of the metro,
eyeing the rats,
and wander home – late even for you,
with dirty shoes and empty pockets.

- 8/15/08

 

Columbia 2

I think: this is where I will become a poet,
standing before the body of my work
as before a slab of marble-
chisel in hand,
ready to carve this writer’s block.

- 9/15/08

 

After MoMA

I want to do what Seurat did for painting
for language – every letter
its own dot, an individual
rather than an arbitrary building block
for sandcastles in the sky.

- 9/15/08

 

L’Auteur

A strange and solitary beast,
the writer slithers through life
sheds his prose like a coil of skin
and moves on.

- 9/18/08