TC: Clemente (1934 - 1972)

.

won’t forget
his nervous
habit of
rearing his
head back
on his neck
like a
proud horse

no olvidaré
su nerviosa
costumbre de
altar la
cabeza muy
alta
como un
caballo de raza

Roberto Clemente: photos from The Pennsylvania Department, The Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh
Thumbnail photo: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Spanish translation by Jose L. Varela-Ibarra

Thinking Of Michael

I was turned off by The Nation's blog on Michael Jackson this morning. Michael Jackson was one of the top practitioners of his art, which, for all its synthetic elements and crossover appeal, is ultimately an African-American form. He comes from the same mold as Louis Armstrong, Jellyroll Morton, King Oliver, and Bessie Smith. Those credentials were recognized in one of those the-planets-must-be-in-alignment situations when Quincy Jones agreed to produce Off The Wall in 1979. I was into Jackson before that album came out, and it was a secret pleasure. Everyone knew and loved The Jackson Five, but after that phase, they — and Motown in general — went into drift. By 1978, the black and white entertainment worlds had separated again. I was in Chicago at the time, and you heard white bands on white radio stations and black artists on black radio stations, and in Chicago, you had a lot of black music to choose from. One of my favorite deejays was named Pervis Spann. He had the rap to match his handle, and he spun some very cool sides. It may have been on his program that, heating up my tube Zenith, I tuned in to what MJ was releasing, which the white world really didn't care about. That is how I want to remember Michael Jackson. Not as the sexy but programmed 10-year-old. And certainly not as the artist and human being who lost his way. But as the epitome of a black form, with a beautiful face, a true innovator. Requiescat in pace.

TC: Fidelity

.

Fidelity, after long practice, to
The things that have crossed one's path in life,
Moves one to find "history" in a morning,
A moonlit night, a transitory patch
Of sun upon grass, the turning of a cat's
Sleek head over its shoulder to look back
Into one's eyes, a lifelong lover's touch,
The memory of the shy sweet sidelong
Smile of a friend one may not see again
In "this life"--these things define home
To one now that one lives largely in one's mind--
As though there had ever been any other
Place--once born, once having existed--
In which to somehow locate a world

Because brief hours before fadeout life becomes
A late awakening, much as one assumes
Is the experience of "lost" generations
Whose youth is turned back toward childhood by
Dreams; just so one's own dim youth now at last
Appears a kind of slumber from which the slow
Process of waking took a half century
Or so, as time now opens up its eyes,
Yawns, stretches, struggles in dark to discover
Where it is among whirling things, places, years.
But of course one will never fully emerge
From this fog, nor in one's heart wish to do so,
For mere excursions don't suffice on visits
To dead cities--excavation too's required,
Cries out the hungry unborn poem
Within us, demanding to exist as
If alive

Arundinaria shiuyingiana at Eagle's Nest: photo by Minghong, 2009
Dew on grass: photo by Luc Viatour, 2007
Australia vs. India: photo by Ricky212, 2006

Fidelity: from The New World, Libellum Books (forthcoming)

TC: Daily News

.

Dying day pinches the tot
He grabs my pen and beads
And plays into my hands
His father’s skull glistens
Across his wife’s white arms

The past bursts on a flower
And softly erases its bulb
We hear this going on all around
Night packs the traffic in cotton
And 1st Ave. fruit stands in opal

It is his first day to hurl a toy
But a gray torch rises in the future
Like a pair of scissors
The dark unravels towards
As I return to my newspaper

Woman and Window Display: photo by James Jowers, 1968 (George Eastman House Collection)
1st Ave: photo by James Jowers, 1966 (George Eastman House Collection)

TC: On the Lagunitas Road

.





Light spray over a daisy chain of days.
Many wives, brought on rocking boats,
Dissolve into one loved damsel.
Jury of Sighs, it is Time
To load the back with groceries.
Did I drive right? Risky slopes
Deer start across, hushed timber
Cool and the engine smoking.
When mouths of fog cover the truck
Pushed by wind, the ocean sends
Us violet shrouds, bears
Brush us in the dark eucalyptus.
Where the hawk dives, a flowing zone
Lights the road. A brown head whispers,
Friend of a lonesome man
In the restless advance of trees
And cars, signalling the way.

Looking north from Barnabe Fire Road, Samuel P. Taylor State Park: photo by Miguel v, 2003
Sherbrooke Forest: photo by Patche99z
'49 Chevrolet 3100 1/2 ton and '54 deluxe: photo by Writegeist, 2007

TC: Postconceptualism

.







I like breathing better than wireless ideation
But strange is the human meat
When it is ripped out of the atmosphere
And arrows are shot into it

Nothing is personal then
And everything is true
Including love's great circumambience
And the skull in the mirror

The mortal intimation
Of souls of beings long since lost
In a forgotten past
And the deep pink nescience

Of the thought evacuated tissue
Glaring back at you
Through the empty eyeholes
In the mask

She Sees Him (Human Emulation Robot): photo by Steve Jurvetson, 2004
Martyrdom of St. Sebastian (detail): Giovanni Baleison, 1484 (Main altar, Cappella San Sebastiano, Marmora, Cuneo, Italy)
Death's-head Hawkmoth (Acherontia lachesis): photo by Trevor Hartsell, 2006
Polish Death Hussar Insignia 1920, from M. Gajewski, Replika odznaki Dywizjonu Huzarów Smierci, 1920: photo by Kuczman, 2009
Jacques Plante's original fiberglass goaltender's mask (1959): photo by Horge, 2008

TC: Light Sleeper

As all the ballast of familiar life
Floated away from the hot air balloon
That was taking me in far-travelling mood
Over vast still mountains once glimpsed in dreams
I felt my foolishness in the domain
Of the air like a kind of punctuation
Applied to a page before a word’s written
By that great Friend who, scattered everywhere
In the universe, seems to piece together
The floorplans of the endarkened rooms
Of this great city by negative design
Until the shapes before my eyes became
Obscure as all those lost relationships,
As all the ballast of familiar life

Early morning balloon flight over the West Bank in Luxor, Egypt: photo by Marcosleal, 2004
Hot air balloons over the Masai Mara, Kenya: photo by Whit Welles, 2007