Poems y Poemas

Phone on Vibrate

Oh God! That sound – not again, have mercy!

Like a hornet, like a drill, I hear it, curse me!

Just ignore it, says a voice – devilish, winking

But I know by now I cannot do whatever

it is thinking

And already my shoulders droop, already

I wilt

For even once it’s gone, comes the new drone–

Of guilt!

El amigo soltero debe morir

El amigo soltero debe morir

Esta es mi solo verdad

No hay una problema

Sencillamente explico la sistema

Y si un se sigue la regla, se sabe

El amigo soltero debe morir

Él (o, con frecuencia, ella)

Es útil – no, quiero decir – está amado

Te da ayuda muchísima

Por toda su infancia

Pero cuando es tiempo a desaparecer

Partirá como un luz crecientemente oscuro

Con un sonriese misterio de alegría

Sobre la placer de sus amigas perdidas

Quienes ‘la aman,’ pero ya la han olivado.

Como si decir – los que no pueden tener la vida

En la vida después;

O a través de las generaciones y

Las propagaciones (o varios otros métodos habituales) 

También deben no tener la vida ahora,

En esto mundo

La vida aquí es un lujo

Un lujo demasiado costoso!

Así pronto morirte, con gusto!

La excepción sola que he encontrado, si usted desea saberlo

(y probablemente, no lo quiere, porque usted está casada con felicidad)

Es cuando ella sirve bien la amiga que un día será casada

Tal vez, pues, se la concede la vida.

Pero si sobrevive su utilidad

Porque la otra ha encontrado la felicidad

Con algún vulgar tonto u otro

Entonces, caída la sentencia

y tiemblan todas las solteras a oír

(Ya usted sabe la frase que viene –)

La amiga soltera debe morir!

 ***

Strangely, today, as if impelled I took

One stop more than was necessary on

The subway and was

The subject unwitting

Of a prank – filmed, all – will it go

viral? –

Once I detrained – almost as if, at each stage,

I contemplated turning back and did not, but chose

To take the fall – I mean

Why was I even

there at all? 

I realize that

There are humiliations in life but some

Seem less necessary than others and this

Could so well

not have happened, nor been

Recorded

For posterity (and at once is lost

Another over-covering of armor, see it

Slip away and I –

Am now shorter, smaller – I have none of that

Strong strength of strongness I have cultivated

none of that – )

I find

That cruelty always confronts me (when it rarely does)

With a delayed force as if

I can’t quite believe it – from you? For me? But why? Por qué?

Why me? Why now? Why on this train that I

Might not have taken

 – perhaps

I did something to deserve it? – I indulge

In an internal audit

How hard it is to accept the ancient wisdom after all

That the world contains wolves behind their walls

There are wolves out there who will hurt you, child

You may not believe it but there are there are

There are wolves there child

There are

***

After having finally managed

To wrest some happiness out of life, you hold it

In the palm of your hand, like a light

And try to show it to others, thinking

They will be pleased

But instead they shrink from you, as if diminished

As if joy – though much sentimentalized – can only arrive

When taken from someone else.

And that’s when you realize that life is 

A great rhinoceros – master

The riding of it in one direction and its horn

Arches up from the other – for

No sooner have you found that

Most obscure thing – happiness

Than up from behind comes the new thing – Ouch!

***

… how fearful

As you guess that again it begins

-- Anna Akhmatova (Thomas trans.)

With what terror the precipice one over-peers

When the gears and grind of love start again – o painful!; the years

Since the last time are as nothing at all, impossible to recall

As if all the books read and thoughts thought and deeds all

Admired in the interval

Were just a way

To pass the time and now have resumed

Their proper place of unreality before

The tyrant holds sway, that

Dreadful imperative – always with me

(not so for others I have found)

They regarded it as a crime, and when

The hot spurs began, they would

Avert their eyes in shame; they too knew, this was wrong

And I say “I told you so! I told you so!”

***

The New Breed 

So easy it is to frame

A reputation for being an “intellectual”

On the thinnest list of referents, take a pick

Of Strauss or Berdyaev it’s all the same 

And you need not have more than one.

Then this, tell to

An interviewer or two

And now you’ve got it made – “True, this one’s

A white supremacist fascist stooge

But a new breed of one – cause he’s smart, you see

He’s on his anti-atomist Thomist spree”

With ideas that would have been

Cause for scorn

‘Cept no one realizes

Whence they were born

In all such ways do the creeps hoodwink

With truisms over again the tired old sink

Of mainstream opinion, “I didn’t know

Folks had ever thought this stuff before, and though

It reeks of rotten planks of the sinking ship of state…” –

Oh Lord, I pray, let me not let go my hate

But press it closer to my heart like grace

Often has it steered me wrong to trust

The angel of guttering wisdom,

Its reasons, the delight, of every sage
In every age; but never

Have I cause to regret

My kind red devil of rage

Which ever replenishes, that noble fount

My contempt for this and every new breed.

***

Justification by Faith

“Bertrand’s speech […] had annoyed him in more ways than he’d have believed possible.”

~ Kingsley Amis, Lucky Jim

In the course of the vote on a resolution somewhere

Condemning the demolition of Palestinian houses

And the like

Someone I never could stand – and not for any good reason –

And whom all other people insistently liked a great deal –

Sat down in front of me and

His face lighting up with wicked rage and

Not caring that – no, actually, demanding that – I could hear him

Said in a shouting whisper, “This vote’ll be great –

You know what’s a fantastic idea? Let’s convince everyone we’re Anti-Semites!”

Sarcasm, you see.

Because Palestinians not having their houses get demolished

Is Anti-Semitic; indeed, it may well be the case,

That their very existence is Anti-Semitic

Those unapologetically living things.

And from me flicks out not only

The expected lizard’s tongue of fury, at these words

But also an unbidden glow of triumph.

A relief to know, I guess,

That one needn’t have been more generous in one’s estimation.

***

When reading a product

  Of my pen, I compare

The draft original with one I shared

With markers editorial, and

  I despair

To see my crystalline prose, now pock-marked

  By infamous gash or tear

As if one could spot

  Each pace along

  The smooth immaculate shore

The eruption occasional of stupidity

 “Yeek, That was not mine – but yours!”

 Any fortuitous insight, that was wheeled round

  With consummate limpidity

Has here been shrouded in the dark of meanness and 

 Cupidity

There,

 A sword-stroke of genius, prenatally

Smothered

 Do they not realize

    Each word was chosen

Because it could not possibly be

 Another?

***

 Isn’t it amazing how some human beings –

    At once announce themselves as simply awful?

    And spare you any uncertainty?
They are few, you'll be relieved
I've met two, I believe
 (Both male)
And that was enough.