The Book of Poetry

Afriend, in Thailand, helping to build straw bale homes

wasriding with four Buddhist monks on the back of a truck

piledhigh with musky bales. “I love water buffaloes,” she burst out

inbroken Thai.  The monks laughed. I guess that is

a strange thingto say, shethought, but insisted.

“No,really, I really love them,” trying to unfurl herself

clearly,practicing the Zen Garden of making conversation

withonly a few words.  “They are sobeautiful, so strong.

Don’tyou love them?”  But the monks justkept laughing.

Everytraveler in Southeast Asia has her own story

oftonal confusion: the same syllable spoken different ways

becomesfour, six, seven words.  In China,Ma

meansmother, but also hemp, horse, scold—depending if

itis flat, rising, dipping, or falling. Sometimes context helps,

aswhen ordering food:  No one islikely to confuse

“Iwant to eat” with “I demand an ugly woman,”

unlessone is dining in a brothel, and even then “I want eggplant”

thoughmistoned “whirlpool shake concubine twins”

islikely to produce only strips of sauce-smeared nightshade.

Everyonein China wants to know what you do.

It’snot easy, even in English, for a poet to say that.

Whenthey asked, I said first, “I write,” woxie,

orsometimes, after I had learned the word, “I am a poet.” 

Wo shi shi ren.  Often, I was met by puzzlement,

strainedforeheads, awkward laughter, Chinese people

glancingat each other for cues, uncertain how to react.

Notso different really from the response in America.

“Apoet” I’d repeat. Wo shi shiren.  Then,

“Iwrite poetry,” trying to make the most

ofmy minuscule vocabulary.  “I writebooks of poetry.” 

Wo shi shi ren: literally, Iam a poetry person.

Wo means I; ren means person, or man.

Nearthe end of my travels, someone told me

shi—which ispronounced “sure” and means poetry

inthe high flat tone, as well as the verb “to be”

inthe falling tone—also means shit

inyet another tone.  So, all along Imust have been saying 

I am a shitman.  Iwrite shit.  And repeatingit. 

A shitperson.  I write books of shit.  Understand?

Tobe—poetry—shit. Something fitting in how these words

wereassigned the same syllable, the same address.

Later,looking the word up, I discovered for each tone, shi

wasten or twenty words, a whole apartment complex

sharingone mailbox.  Corpse, loss, world,history, time, stone,

life,to begin, to be, to die, to fail, to be addicted to,

roughsilk, persimmons, raincoats, swine, long-tailed marmot,

clearwater—all crowded into the same syllable—sure,

sure,sure.  It was also coincidentallythe word for yes.

So,perhaps I had said something else entirely

Ithought of all the combinations I might have said.

I am a shitperson.  I write life. 

I am a deathperson.  I write being.  I shit history man.

I history beingperson.  I write time.  I write books of failure,

books ofcorpses, books of loss, books of yes.

I am a beingperson. I write to be. 

I am addictedto being a man.

I write booksof shit, books of clear water.

I am a poet.

Itseemed all the world could, even should, have one word

foreverything—table scales, taxis, bicycles, stones, cities,  

timeand history and death and life.  Itwas all shit.

Itwas all poetry.  As for my friend,she found out later

waterbuffalo was a variation of the word for penis.

So,“I love penises” she had confided to the Buddhist monks,

thetruck jostling, the potholes throwing her knees

againsttheirs. “I really love penises,” she had insisted,

lookinginto their celibate eyes.  “Penises are

sobeautiful, so strong.   Don’tyou love them?”

Sincethe syllable for monk is also the syllable

ofmy name on fire in a world of loss, I will answer.  Sure,

Ilove penises and water buffalo and the smell

ofwet hay, and vaginas and sautéed eggplant and concubine twins,

andI want to tell the Buddhist monks, and the Chinese bureaucrats,

andthe official from Homeland Security

whostopped me in customs to search my computer, and my mother

theSzechwan horse: I am a shit man writing books of stone

andthe clear water has failed, but I am addicted

writingyes in a city of corpses and swine and persimmons,

hereat the end of history, now at the beginning of time.

Madagascar

Beworried.  Be very worried.

saysthe cover of Time Magazine

butthe next month it says

TheTruth about Soccer Moms

andI hold my head like a beach ball

undermy arm, ready for the next challenger. 

Becausewe are living in a disposable world

andI am a disposable word.

Also,mascara has nothing to do

withthe destruction of Madagascar

mygood hard working people.

Mylove I am swimming to you

throughthese yellow flags, nipple tassels,

andconfetti, like a sperm on Red Bull

inthe cross-hatch of anovulatory mucous

paddlingtoward the faint outline

ofour son, in a shooting gallery

ofthe future. Given current conditions,

it’sprobably best not to fertilize

forat least another 500 years. Meanwhile,

letus find new centers of feeling:

thegrounded shrimp boat, the card catalog,

theman in the cement mixer, paused

ata crossing, talking on his cell phone

tothe third daughter of his second marriage,

asa train passes bringing a half day’s mountain

oflight to the city. At least it still looks

likea strawberry someone is playing

ona violin, to someone else stringing

windowson a necklace of

distance.  And am I doing anything

worththe mound of coal lighting my heart?

Iam watching the snow fall

intothe abyss, blanket the earth with blue dusk,

oron to my love’s tongue.  Whenmorning comes,

grandeurrises from the crevasse of mist

onlyto exhaust itself trying to cross

theseprairie towns.  Madagascar

hasnothing to do with the scar on my heart

orwith the destruction of Madagascar.

Testimony

Ihave given up meaning, order, religion, but there are still constellations:

Yourcunt.  Your cunt and the sun.  Your cunt and the sun and your face andthe table. 

Yourcunt and the moon and the sun and the street.

Itravel these pathways again and again, Tuesday at noon and Thursday at dusk,

witha little song, a song and a jig, with laughter and sorrow.

Iraise the cup to my arm raising the cup. I raise the cup to your cup

andto the cup of snow and the chalice of earth in the hand

ofa crippled God who cannot raise a cup. Because he cannot,

Iraise the cup to your arm raising the cup, and to the forest

ofyour arm showering its scents on an undeserving and hostile world.

Iraise the cup to the impossibility of living—have you found itotherwise?—

andto the moral imperative of dying

andto shaving with a dull blade in the fountains of Madrid

andto the black sky that will cover us with pitchfuls of dirt

andto bouquets of frightened voices for sale in a clown’s hand

andto my baby sister awake in the night like a sculpture of milk.

Ihave given up meaning, but there are still constellations:

thecup and the cup and the cup and the cup

andthe stars falling into a black mug that no one will drink,

andme falling into your body these hours appointed by no God

andthe moon and the sun, and tomorrow, and your cunt, and today.

Andnot your cunt, but your face.  Andnot the moon, but this tear.

Andnot the street it carves, but a life. And not a life, but a cunt

tellinga story to the face of the dark. Saying: Listen, come here.

Andnot on Thursday, but Today.  And notin the Spring, but the Summer.

Notthe Summer, but the kitchen.  Not inthe kitchen, but the warm bread. 

Notin the bread, but the fingers and the tongue.

Notin the tongue, but the song, in the elegy sung

Andnot the elegy, but each thing we did not know was loved. 

Andnot love, but two bodies in Winter. And not the song, but the song.

Note:   The word “testimony” comes from the Latin root testes, which meant both “testicle”and “to bear witness.” Some etymologists explain that men once bore witness, orswore, with their hand upon their testicles. “Cunt” is a Middle English word ofgood stock that did not become the most taboo and obscene word in the Englishlanguage until the eighteenth century. It was used, forexample, by Chaucer. I align myself here with feminists who believe thevulgarity of the word reflects a violence toward women, the body, and sexualityand who seek to reclaim word and thing in a spirit of praise.

#DeadFacebookFriends

Cannotunfriend you.

Neverpost too often

everystupid thing

theyare

doingcooking eating

everyhalf hour.

Whenthey post, they mean it.

Theysay things like:

Driftingthrough diagonal ice clouds.

Or:

Howbeautiful the horn of the Brooklyn park ferry

andthe man in oversized black shirt and pants

ona sweltering day, running to catch the 5:35

tomake the wake of a child he played flamenco for

ina hospital, which is his ordinary job, stopping short,

ata loss now, as the boat’s white wake pulls away.

Or:

Tenyears now, even in purgatory,

likebending to pick up a penny

droppedin line at the bank.

Whenyour friends join their ranks,

yourown circle of friends

offriends expands

toencircle all the earth.