The Double
The Double
How did I become double? School of Quietude poet and Post Avant Boho?
Reading Dostoyevsky while standing in line for the bus in front of the Coatesville Post Office that would take me to the Army at the same time my double was gadding about Berkeley (possibly)? No. But and well… Well, it’s a long story involving ruby slippers, the Jim Jims and the Diamond at the End of Time. I include this passage. Somewhere in the middle of the adventure – showing a fated encounter with my other self. I had just come back to Castle Elsinore… “But I went to Elsinore.I admit that I did feel somewhat disoriented. I was in front of the arras -- the vulgar one Keats had installed -- and for an instant I thought it was Polonious who was (I saw his feet) hiding behind them. I put my hand on my sword. Perhaps I'd take a poke at him and get him out of there... and then the arras was twitched aside and a figure with a sword glittering in his hand stepped out. He wore a plum colored doublet and hose, fine Spanish boots of Spanish leather, his eyes were mad but full of a supernal intelligence, his hat was of the latest French style with a white feather and made of the same midnightly satin as his cape and festooned with scenes from the Kama Sutra done in scarlet and silver thread. The bastard was dressed just like me. I tore my own sword from my scabbard. I knew who it was. " type="text/javascript">
It’s the eyes, of course. Any duelist knows this and it was the first advice my old teacher, Sir Diaphanous Silkworm, had imparted to me many years ago and with many blows in the upper room of the adjunct to the Inns of Court. Follow the eyes… and I attempted to do so…but the eyes of the vile bard were so bright and mad, withal sad and merry – my eyes, damn him -- that I was distracted. The ruby slippers didn’t help.
“Duck stealer,” I hissed attempting to shake off my right slipper. My opponent, blade flashing, slowed his advance. He smiled sardonically. Stopped and bowed. “Slippered pantaloon!” And he flung back his head and laughed. I did the same.“Ha haha hahahah” Shakespeare "Ha hahah hahahah hahahah hahaah!" I cried! There was something desperate in his laughter. I did the same.
“Ha haha hahahah” Shakespeare
"Ha hahah hahahah hahahah hahaah!" I cried!
There was something desperate in his laughter. I heard it. In fact there was something desperate in mine.
And at once I knew what it was.
We were both scanning the vaulty upwards for a chandelier to swing from and I could tell from just this that both of us had in many an adventure found one and leaping vaulted over the heads of the King’s men uttering defiant slogans to appear behind then bringing down the dreaded portcullis on the heads of those sons of bitches.
My slippers were off. I lept backwards bringing my blade down to quickly sketch the first lines of a merry yet sad poem in the air.
He did the same. The second line. How the hell did Shakespeare know Yeats?
I remembered the advice of Polonius: “Beware of entrance to a quarrel, but being in Bears’t that the opposed may beware of thee.”
I looked steadily at him. How could I help but notice as he stood there that he bore his weapon with the grace of a Douglas Fairbanks and a match for my Errol Flynn or that we both shared the slim yet agile and muscular physique so desired until it all went bad…?
My blade snickered and the fiery letters formed. His certain defeat.
"Wie in der Hand ein Schwefelzundholz, weisz!"
The first line of Rilke’s” Spanish Dancer!”
(And again I wondered how anyone could write poetry when the word for “ match” is “Schwefelzundholz”)
He seemed stunned and appalled and I sneered laughing.
And he laughingly sneered. And it was my turn to be s and a’d as he cut the English translation of the last line of the poem into the gloomy gloom of the questionable corridor of Elsinore.
“She tramples it to death with small firm feet.”
I fainted. I deserved defeat.
And awoke – alive – Shakespeare stood over me. I slowly struggled up… averting my gaze from the poet who defeated me – yet again. He brought out a pack of Luckies and offered me one. I took it reluctantly. I would smoke it and then he would kill me.
I was out of matches. Somehow he knew and produced a lighter in the shape of a golf club, He was close. I smelt – the unmistakable scent of duck a la orange, a fine cognac and of hemp.
Damn you, RON,” I said,. “I knew it was you all along.”
“Rilke is overrated, LON. It’s so sad to see this…decay…” He giggled.
I jumped back and screamed!
“Watch out It’s the hunchback!”
Of course he didn’t believe me but I grabbed him and turned him around and we both, I am afraid, made low moan.
You would too… for advancing down the hall were, as far as I could see, most of the more unpleasant characters from the plays.
Worrying About Milton
I am worried about Milton. So I am happy and will probably write a good poem. Trying not to think about the Amish. We have two libraries here. His and Mine. Sometimes during the day when he is dormant I go down to his library. Down, down down.
And I remember this I wrote. Not about my other self but about all that outside inside.
The Insect Clerks of Neiman Marcus
Lo! The Gods and Goddesses of the new mythology.
The Godesses are crocodiles in communion dresses!
They wear Adolf of Dachau designer jeans!
They wear necklaces of bird skeletons!
The Gods wear shrouds of petroleum jelly!
They brilliantine their hair.
They turn their mild, Belsen eyes on you
"May I help you sir?" O do not stare!
At secret luncheons they devour lark's hearts.
They devour the intestines of mummys.
They prefer larks three to one.
Three to one.
They have never murdered a baby
Who didn't deserve it.
Listen O listen!
Hear the twitching of their delicate attennae!
Haie! They come! They come!
Dragging their long
and swelling abdomens!
The insect clerks of Neiman Marcus!
The insect clerks of Neiman Marcus!
The insect clerks of Neiman Marcus!
Beware their dread ovipositors!
Beware their dread ovipositors!
Beware their dread ovipositors!
The insect clerks have come.
There are trapdoors in Cosmetics!
There are trapdoors in Lingerie!
There are trapdoors in Men's Accessories!
There is a secret button in the elevator.
Nightly they descend into vast catacombs.
Buffy! Meagan! Tom! Wesley!
They hang upside down!
They copulate like bats!
They whisper to each others in the languages
Of prehistoric fungi!
And, like Gods everywhere,
They are always hungry.
O Holy Mother!
The store is closing!
They know who you are!
Run! O RUN!
There is a trapdoor in Customer Service.
Down you go
down
down
down
They carry you effortlessly through the tunnels.
They carry you past rooms.
Rooms where small blue clouds weep!
Rooms full of angel guts!
Rooms full of bearded foetuses in bronze caskets.
Rooms where your wife makes love to eels!
(Your wife has a certain eel sex appeal)
Rooms where sores run naked on chandeliers!
Rooms where sewage rats read poetry
In pink peignoirs!
O what is this big room?
It is the Mad Queen's chamber.
It is the throneroom of hearts.
It looks. It looks.
The inside of your brain.
The indifferent mandibles let you drop
To the marble floor.
They quietly suck out your eyes.
And then
Ah! Then!
The Mad Queen comes.
Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh!
The dread ovipositer.
You lay paralyzed.
You look out into the "Crevices of Night."
After 80,000 years
your tears
turn to pearls.
Oh, those were pearls that were his eyes.
Nothing of him but doth suffer…
The Night The Moon
My time is almost here. The moon a ghostly galleon and I feel the change and now for an instant I am neither the Other nor Myself. I am Non Silliman and I remember Bob Bly telling me once night long ago.
Great art and literature are the only models we have left to help us stop lying. The greater the art the less the denial. We don't need avant-garde art now, but great art. Breaking through the wall of denial helps us get rid of self pity, and replaces self pity with awe at the complicated misery of all living things...
The CHANGE HAS COME. WHAT NONSENSE!!!!!!!!!!!
THE TRUTH ABOUT THE AMISH
The boy just delivered the Daily Local News. I see the OTHER forgot to cancel the subscription. But it was distressing to read:
AMISH BLAME RECENT DISAPPEARANCES ON DEMON
I couldn't bear to read the rest.
This morning, when I woke up, my hand was covered with what I suspect is Shoo Fly Pie. I don't really want to know. I am NOT responsible...but could it be beginning again?
Months ago after my trip to Germany I found this tucked inside my signed Yvor Winters chapbook (Very rare!)
Amishmen ambled Nude beach near Nurmberg
Grim was their visage Gormless their Grinning
Grimly grinning mocking our manners
Feignlings from Lancaster in far Pennsylvania
At midnight I seized them Made of them scrapple
Fed to the swine and sweet did they find them.
Kann ich dei Pikder nemme asked I that night
Ambling Amishman and I asked In Amish
Cunning was I Canny and cruel
Cunningly creeping with Speedgraphics camera
Now it is known Oh Hard was my heart
But hot was the jazz and jumping the joint
Rare was the reefer where laughing I lured them
Good jazz, bologna and big butted women
Promised I them and primping they perked up
“Great are the Germans and Awesome the Amish
We will go watching the big butted women
We will waste not the blessed bologna
The comradely kindred Amish and German.”
Now sorely my sadness speciously sighing
Lament I the murder malicious and mad
Young men of sinew! useless the eulogy
Somewhere near Lancaster laments an old mother
Asking for surcease anguish awakened
Mirthless in Millersville on a miserable morning
An old Amish man phones his brother the news.
Is this a fantasy...or....?
I don't want to know!!!!!
Nietzsche wrote:
"What, then, is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms—in short, a sum of human relations which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory to a people: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are; metaphors which are worn out and without sensuous power; coins which have lost their pictures and now matter only as metal, no longer as coins".
If only I could believe this. But then what would I be?... perhaps I only believe this
WHEN THE WOLFBANE BLOOMS
Yes, you my readers, my only friends, you are thinking murder oh murder.
But the truth I fear is worse.
I fear the OTHER is, one Stolzfus at a time, turning the poor Amish into Post Avant Bohos!
Why do you think "Hat" is called "Hat?"
I need another drink. I need to read some Alfred Noyes.
Last Night
What did I do last night? I am so afraid to look at my Other’s blog.
I dreamt I slept with Gregory Corso.
Not bad but no Apollo’s torso.
“Not me! I cried to Anselm Hollo.
But he just smiled. Said “Follow, follow!”
Where is my volume of Clark Ashton Smith? Ah, here it is.
O Muse, where loiterest thou? In any land
Of Saturn, lit with moons and nenuphars?
Or in what high metropolis of Mars—
Hearing the gongs of dire, occult command,
And bugles blown from strand to unknown strand
Of continents embattled in old wars
That primal kings began? Or on the bars
Of ebbing seas in Venus, from the sand
Of shattered nacre with a thousand hues,
Dost pluck the blossoms of the purple wrack
And roses of blue coral for thy hair?
Or, flown beyond the roaring Zodiac,
Translatest thou the tale of earthly news
And earthly songs to singers of Altair?
I am afraid that again last night – changed utterly into post avant boho wolf and disguised as an Amishman -- I went to the Stolzfus farm up in Millersville and read Clark Coolidge to Amos Stoltzfus again. Poor old fellow thinks I am mad but agrees it’s damn good Amish. He might be right.
Today I found some lines I wrote in that twilight state – as I am changing – neither formalist nor post avant.
I once met Denise Levertov.
I fear I am no better off.
One time I met Kenneth Koch.
He kept staring at my crotch.
In Harlem I met Countee Cullen.
I looked well so he was sullen.
James Dickey.
Was rather icky.
I never met Richard Eberhart
.I find I do not give a fart.
Siegfried Sassoon.
A vile buffon.
Langston Hughes.
I'm not amused.
Hart Crane.
Inane.
Adrienne Rich.
Back off, bitch.
Hope you're leavin'
Wallace Stevens.
And then the lines about Corso above.
And then I found this:
Lament
A whippoorwill trills
On a Millersville hill.
Trilling so sadly
As whippoorwills will.
And the breeze it blows madly
Past a forlorn windmill
I can't say just why
But there is a Big Chill.
In a barn there's
a sad horse named Stoltzfus
There's a creek
Full of ignorant crawfish.
A sad bird, a wild wind
And a lonesome clodhopper.
Oh yes, I should've listened
To Dietrich Bonhoeffer!
Oh, what did I do out there among the Amish!!!!????
7 AM, Paoli, Pennsylvania, The Mews
Up betimes and with nary a thought to John Clellan Holmes, Charles Bukowski, Beatrice Wood, Allen Ginsberg, Diane DiPrima, Carolyn Cassady, Gary Snyder, Carl Solomon, Ken Kesey, Simon Vinkenoong, Kaviraj George Dowden, John Montgomery, Jack Kerouac, Ken Babbs, Bruce Fearing, Ray Bremser, Al Aronowitz, Ana Christy, Gerald Nicosia, Diane Wakowski, Bob Kaufman, Steve Richmond, Janine Pommy Vega, Antler, Herbert Huncke, Pradip Choudhuri, Jack Micheline, Gregory Corso, Joan Reid, Allen Cohen, Yusuke Keida, Barbara Moraff, A.D.Winans, Tuli Kupferberg, Richard Morris, George Montgomery, Frank Moore, Erling Friis-Baastad, t.k.splake, ruth weiss, elliott, Ted Berrigan, Neeli Cherkovski, Clayton Eshleman, Gerald Locklin, Joy Walsh, Anne Waldman, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Michael McClure, Kurt Nimmo, Ron Androla, Graham Cournoyer, Bill Costley, Jan Kerouac, Jeanne Conn, Stephan Ronan, Christine Zwingman, Chris Challis, Lyn Lifshin, Ulvis Alberts, Lorrie Jackson, Tony Seldin, Judson Crews, Steve Allen, William S. Burroughs, Dinah Shore, Neal Cassady or Ted Joans.
Roseanna Warren is so hot! Read Billy Collins while sitting outside in the great garden here in Paoli. Buttermilk scone and a quart of Dewars. One must keep his edge for tomorrow for there’s a John Donne festival at West Chester University! I impersonate a rag and bone and hank of hair and walking about I wonder if any young people will recognize that I am a very allegorical fellow and represent seven types of ambiguity along with one great truth: there are a lot of shit for brains bohemian poseurs out there pissing in the Well of English.
Thought of the word “lucid” for one hour -- oh how I love creating poetry. Thinking of combining “lucid” with the word “light.” But one must be cautious. The “lucid light” Perhaps too incautious I am. But think of it – one could do end as poem that way. Van Gogh at Arles blah blah etc. then the last line “lisping the lucid light.” Do I dare????
Oh, “Verse” has arrived in the mail! Can there be too many poets named after birds? One doubts this.
Off to the mall at Exton for a pedicure.
Every day I seem more and more to resemble Maria Ouspenskaya. I’ll be 60 soon. What care I? Lisping the lucid light.
The moon was full last night. The wolfbane blooming. I can already feel the change.
I am afraid to peek at my other blog – as always. What did I do last night?
Oh dear God help me – naked pictures of Corso and Ginsberg!
God forgive the beast in me!
