As sparrows raced by my window, I thought: this simple, eager movement of theirs finally equals all my cares.
Being alive is caring about things which don't matter. I must admit I care about things that tomorrow will not exist anywhere. But what shall I think? The sparrows were gone in a blink. They fly! And I wish I had their purpose. I would be happy! Love is only a fear of loss. I worship love, but love cannot end in happiness. Love, at most, is all my life. Life---everyone's life!---lives less and less. My favorite landscapes are small in my dying hands.
I fly with the sparrows. I fly---I fly in the brightness of shadowy lands.
Have you ever argued with someone when you had nothing to say? Their argument was here--- but yours was far away? These are the best arguments, in truth. They exactly resemble love. Aren't you proud of your love every day? Your only wish is that they listen to you, madly, helplessly in love, an argument which cannot be articulated (who, for instance, could defend that with the full realization of what it is?) but this is what makes your argument great. In love it is impossible to say all the things which make you love. It is never---never---too late for someone to understand what you understand. Your only defense is love, but there is hope, because arguments are nearly invisible, completely existing in the mind, less substantial than air. Arguments cannot be kind or unkind. Like this plea for love---resembling my life (I forget most of mine). In my poem it was almost there.
Now that I don't like you, what do I think of myself? A good question---one I never thought to ask before. I still think it depends on who you are. I honestly don't know. You let out hints you were a whore. But now that I don't love you anymore, I guess none of that matters. The Comedy is over. I'd classify it that way. No one was killed or harmed. But I was just one character. I didn't see what you were doing when I wasn't there. When you don't write the play how can you finally care? Isn't that what the devout understand? You were determined to make it funny for me as you gradually grew bored. In the end for me it was poetry with an E flat seventh chord.
We can't wait for a genius to come along. We need to make money today. Add looks and a beat to make it a good song. Sorry, we don't have a genius today--- but with a little business acumen we'll fake it anyway.
Time is business. No one has time to listen to your whining. Quick! Put the business plan together. We manufacture what we need, at once. We don't have time for a genius to appear. That's like waiting for Jesus to come again. We deal in plain, slightly unhealthy, men. We don't like mediocrity in lovers, medicine, heroes, or poetry--- but it's the only way to get it done today.
It takes years of discipline to produce whatever needs to be put to use— and we don’t have that time. But, anyhow, we can put our plan into action now. History will offer us its lessons but those lessons, as you know, are long. We can’t just offer them to you for a song.
We cannot spend time waiting for your poor body to rhyme in healthy ways. Pay us. That’s what the doctor says. We can’t wait for a dynasty or a superstar to happen by itself. Popularity can’t just happen. We manufacture these things. Officials partner with us. Partnership in business is all. You can bet. We will worry about the rings.
Businessmen marry, like old royal houses did. You—our old customer—must fall. But business will last forever. Even the podcast of science and truth just looks for clicks. Business, once understood, is better than sex. Haven’t you noticed how business tortures revolutionary politics?
If you think you can do it for yourself, you’re wrong. You must go to school for that piece of paper for which you learn nothing— we partner with someone that we pay, who, we make sure, will pay you one day, but only if you pay us enough. Get it? Business is inevitable, like love.
Insanity is worse than crime. Insanity does not recognize crime. Insanity invents the hope of crime. Insanity gives crime a romantic twist. Insanity prints money in a mist. Insanity excuses the excuses of crime. Insanity winks and adds a lime. Insanity encourages encouraging crime. Insanity is secretive. Insanity is never quite on time. Insanity loves crime which is not quite crime. Insanity makes everything "a good time." Insanity makes it a crime to hate crime. Insanity is loved and worshiped as it grows. Insanity is happy in a way only crime knows. Insanity insists this crime is okay since that crime was worse. Insanity likes divorce. Insanity lost its head and kissed crime. Insanity made a clean place for slime. When questioned, insanity responds with force. When "illegal" is erased from the books the insane run to their looks. The insane can act any part. The insane speak nicely to the heart. The insane create hate but never hate.
I like to be small in bed. What is the point of being tall when you sleep? I curl up like a baby, instead. My hands hold my sides. My legs get to know my head in the infinite tangle of infinite sleep. I like to be small in bed. My parts love each other. I love myself in myriad ways--- like creatures love to be close to each other in our darkest or jubilant days.
"But I just had to laugh, I saw the photograph..." John Lennon
"And should I have the right to smile?" TS Eliot
The smile---like laughter and dancing--- is gruesome and fake. Who are you? What sort of face will you need to make when the whole crowd makes the same face? It's hot---because it's crowded and the tortured are dancing--- or running in place.
No one here is smiling. The commuters on the train, are alone, reading, or at rest. They are breathing with both sides of the brain. Solemnity invented religion. Jesus Christ did not grin. The quiet dream is best.
Why is improv theater always a comedic skit? Wouldn't it be funny if it were a tragedy? Random audience suggestions ---Strange hybrid!--- produce the murder of Julius Caesar. Could it?
Is the soul nothing but the life inside where all that's random we nobly deride? Is solemnity a necessity? Or a break from the times we are forced to smile? Give me your hand. I want to stay in this theater awhile.
I watch it quite often—but hate the game show, Jeopardy! (currently hosted by the perky Ken Jennings, for decades by the late, no-mustache-or-mustache? Alex Trebek.)
Hate binds you when you don’t understand it, but now I understand it, and I’m free.
I couldn’t understand why I found myself strongly disliking Jeopardy! champions. Why did I feel visceral disdain for every single one of them, especially the repeat winners?
What was wrong with me? Why was I so hateful? My wife summed it up for me, “Oh shut up. You’re jealous.”
I know stuff, but not as much stuff as the typical Jeopardy! champ. I can’t recall stuff as often, or as quickly, as successful Jeopardy! contestants.
A false line of reasoning betrayed me.
I believed the problem was simply my jealousy of Jeopardy!
“I know enough trivia,” I reasoned to myself, “it isn’t necessary for me to have the superficial, recall knowledge of these freaks, these nerds, on this silly “answer in the form of a question” (what the devil is the point of that?) Game Show invented by Merv Griffin.
But this thinking of mine was false—because it situated my hate in jealousy. Was my wife correct? Was I poisoning myself under the poison jealousy-tree, eating of its poison fruit?
At this rate I would end up inventing my own game show and calling it Jealousy!
And of course it would fail. It would never get on TV.
But this wasn’t the case at all. My dislike of Jeopardy! champs wasn’t about jealousy.
A few days ago, the poet Joyelle McSweeney showed up as a contestant on Jeopardy.
My wife and I both like poetry, and we couldn’t remember if a Jeopardy contestant had ever been announced as “a poet,” so we both said, “cool!”
I recognized her name (I had “Jeopardy! knowledge” of her, but didn’t know her work) and my wife looked up her creds on-line and was impressed, “she’s published a lot of books.”
My wife is impressed by stuff like that—when poets have published lots of books it just makes me vaguely jealous.
Anyway, we both rooted for Joyelle to win, and though she didn’t come across as a real Jeopardy! whiz, she did manage to win, and we were happy for her—and hoped she would keep winning.
This happened to me before. Here was a champ I wouldn’t mind seeing repeat for a while. (There is no limit to how many times a Jeopardy! winner can appear—they keep appearing until they lose.)
She lost the next day. Joyelle was quite photogenic. She held her head at a strange angle, which was kind of intriguing. Her manner was somewhat distant, like she didn’t really care if she won or not, and I wasn’t sure whether she was a little blissed-out, or what was going on.
On her second appearance (I hardly remember her first appearance) she seemed kind of stupid.
This is not to say she is stupid. Of course she isn’t stupid! She’s a writer and a professor.
It was only because she was a poet playing Jeopardy!
To be a good Jeopardy! player, you need to recall a great deal of facts, which, in themselves, have very little meaning. What poet has time to memorize thousands and thousands of facts—and not only that, be able to recall almost every one of them on command in front of lights and a crowd—in under 5 seconds?
I checked out Joyelle McSweeney’s poetry (some of it is available online) between her first and second Jeopardy! appearances and it is extremely dense, with teasing syntax, and plenty of very difficult words.
After seeing her on Jeopardy, I would bet almost anything, that while writing the poems which get into her books, she has never come up with her lines—or even many of her words—in under 5 seconds.
I can see her dreamily consulting a dictionary for hours in order to write one line—as the Ken Jennings of the world sprint on treadmills sipping a protein drink and reciting African and Asian capitols.
Poets are not supposed to be speedy—and the density of the poetry in this one (the not speedy Joyelle McSweeney) is the most characteristic aspect of her poetry.
I knew at once two things—which explained what it was about Jeopardy! champions which filled me with loathing.
Jeopardy! champions are “5 second” people.
There are two types of people—those of quantity and those of quality.
Knowing every capitol of Europe, for instance—is that impressive, or not?
And if it is, why is it more impressive than knowing one capitol of Europe?
It’s only a matter of quantity. Jeopardy! “knowledge” is entirely based on the number of facts which can be recalled—the number of index cards one studies—and the number of facts which stick.
Jeopardy! demands a certain wagering skill (which is part of the game) and I also notice some players are too stupid to look for the “daily doubles” (which allows a player to individually wager, and which is always an advantage to find)—these rubes will choose 200 or 400 (in the Daily Double round) even though a “daily double” is never found behind those squares. (I yell at the TV when this happens.) Joyelle was one of those rubes.
The Jeopardy! champions (the ones who keep winning—you can win once and be an exception) are boring people. There’s something about them which I can’t stand—and now I understand why; they are the quantity-driven, shallow, “5 second” people, no matter what else they bring to the table (they might travel around the world, they might have interesting pets, they might have any number of anecdotal details attached to them which are charming, or perhaps even tragic—none of this matters).
And finally, I have to keep looking at these Jeopardy! champions who keep on winning—when I would rather look at Joyelle McSweeney’s intriguing visage—even though, frankly, I don’t think much of her poetry.
And this opinion is not because I am jealous. I swear.
"The rhyme in the poem," the critic said, "has long since had its day." A life is a chime, struck once, vibrating with a lovely ringing sound, a sweet ringing, ringing, but fading away.
Struck but once, the chime seems prepared to rhyme forever, within the purest metal of itself, the striking a clang, which is physical, but like some mysterious ritual, originates as if from some corner of time that gathers up a far, far sublime of sudden metallic wonder--- hit just once to make a sound we call human. Not just a noise like wood knocking, or thunder, but the sweetest ringing of a chime, which produces, in its vibrating, original songs and vibrates with actual love. (I did! I did! Ask my friends.) as if life were meant to rhyme again and again but then the ringing slowly fades. Slowly, slowly, slowly, until it ends.
The critic says we can no longer rhyme. "That," he says, "was a Byron chime." He laughs. "It belongs to best beloved and once-upon-a-time." But you know what? It doesn't matter what the critic says. No metal is metaphysical. No chime will vibrate for a very long time. We are struck---as if by God---once. The initial striking and ringing is in certain ones terribly sublime--- Chopin frolicking for a few years along a piano, never to happen again. Beethoven and Chopin had to go. They vibrated as Bach and Mozart would vibrate along the bay shocked in white upon blue in their day with times of utter sadness which traveled nearly to madness but stayed within the singing that was them, their holy ringing, which eventually stopped. The whole topic was simply dropped like an uncomfortable conversation in a room, the sad, ringing, harbinger of an even worse doom, and no one could stop it, because the chime is a rhyme within a rhyme within a rhyme and nothing the critic says finally matters. The beginning could only be itself once. Something struck me and I began ringing. Listen to me. I'm ringing still! I will rhyme, in spite of the critics. I will, I will, I will, I will, I will.
Poetry kills poetry. Your health prepares a great feast for disease. Love kills love. With your strange, God-like, mind you refute the idea of a God with ease. Drugs numb pain. But only poetry makes sure you don't feel anything again. My poetry captured our simple routine in which you and I were sensitive to incidents and habits no one else was. I managed, in my poem's description to end religion, pleasure, and love which we experienced in the refined manner in which we went about conducting our affair in the avenue of daylight. The unhappy are looking for us where they saw us when we were happy: this street, that street. I proved with my poetry life can be sweet. Poetry killed poetry. Look! Neither one of us is there.
It's not at all what you thought. It doesn't matter if someone is right. It's the fight. You fought---and now the payment's due. You thought the point was your point. No. It was always what was opposing you. In that interplay--- beyond all that you and he had to say--- is the reality, not seen by the combatants, never glimpsed by him or you--- you believed in God, he made fun of God, but only the combat itself is true. The lengths you went to make your point were the lengths laid out by his position. My insanity is the only reason for your life's mission. My stupidity is the sole reason for the brilliance of you. Can't you see? Love is the only thing we can do.
Scarriet 