a sphere, a poem, and... we're PARTYIN'

arrive. divide the lesser evil of exhaustion, anticipation, and pure genius to come up with something as simple as the first indulgent dip in a cooler-than-it-was-yesterday lake. still arriving, recalling that breeze many years ago, that first sip of a sumptuous lounge... that slumbering chair, that part of a glowing sphere (un ballon-disco, Steph might say) that one doesn't always know or gather around. perhaps the other breezes have gone... oh, they think, the world revolves about us, our instant gracious pleasures, but here between the branches and paths that lead to a conscious beach there is no need for momentary conditions. states of mind and measure colliding like small rounded stones beneath the afternoon waves... stones, as small as perfect sand, white lace, the distant southern shore of familiar lakes enduring before sunset. arrived. My own waving, my own unwavering hope (d'accord, Steph might say), I am here. I walk slowly, and the bygone life seems as certain as a tethered road, I walk, and the people who live here, welcome me, talking openly of their poetic friends. Set free. Young again, at tables dug into weathered shores, at the prudent squint of a generous gift, at a dream, at year after year of a bonfire where the world could never end. A forest of black wood clinging to the tongue of a lake I am willing to taste... Greeting. Dreams that talk of tangible escapes. A boulder outgrown. A question, The Don might say, a quest, but why do we stand and why do we linger here? There is another place, somewhere more ancient than a gust of wind, a cloud, an old coin that was never exchanged. We all have a reason to lament! North from here, old railway lines, shouts of conducted ghosts and scenes engraved by an echo envious urban foes might allow... purchase? Paddles too, and a longing to just BE, to flower like those who have always been here. Hypothesis. Resurrection of return, familiar place and people, the creaking of an old door, 1951 perhaps, or 26, or a billion beyond time instances, the center of all flesh? or Luke the Apostle handing his child a scorpion when asked for an egg, lungs and liver heralding the absence of pain, a shaking of all hands, an atlas for the power of a sky that cannot be pretended. Greeted. The notion of all equations ceasing to exist. A chorus repeated like words under duress befelling another prophet whose armour pulsates at the highest of beats (roll of the eyes), stage (wink), pages? Lance look what the child has read! There is honour among plants, among Isabel's grooved thorns. There is beauty in the bottom bunk. There is a scintillating myth, a moral fibre cleansed of any evil that remained. Difference. Feeling the flush of a breeze when the water is warmer than the air, baptized by an eternal coccoon, garrulous worm. The serpent again. And the parable never ends, the parable "cannot get up and give you anything". And Dee says what if you were the last person on earth and you knew you hadn't long to survive, what would you do, (how would you know?), where would you go? And Dee says this is where she'd come, where Daedelus' plane would set her down, floating towards the raft, and Dee says she wouldn't want to die in a plane crash or even a single car accident. Laughter has a toe in the sand, fresh liqueur, and a dog that pees on you. A dog that yawns more than it barks, that knows you are not looking. More people too. More arms and bones and mouths, more tints of foreheads and labyrynth eyes (so blue, Steph might say). At once the table is clean and full, wine sharing its preserve, its grief and laughter uncorked, oh how time has just begun. A bottle for me, she might say. She, this time? To what end a practical dove, a guffaw! Cold air settling among the coals and luminous hearts... the moon is a likeable device, escape, and sometime later the night's bonfire flutters on and feathers to an end! day too, a saturnal peace ringing like the cool edges of outer space, degrees of serenity... creaking of doors (upstairs, bro says a concave hello). first one to rise, sun warming a square of sand where the volleyball court will settle later in the dawn, land? mist appearing like a fog, (un rêve Steph might say if she weren't asleep), eyes not opening as fully as a mindful trance, eyes like bottles scattered though not yet disposed, those half-full stray ones leaning in the sand thinking they've survived and are hidden from a relentless captor, all of the others bowing to a more mortal horizontal end. the chairs are wet. dew has a way of finding the lowest places... dew? It must be aware yet petrified by what it is, how it forms and remains, the unsuspecting wanderer, melting fleece. Jason, how cold was the Northern air? how hot the cauldron of Medea's rage? Simultaneous refreshment from grapes and Graecian woes --- single digit alarm and heat rising from the lake: all the alcohol that warmed us in the evening declares we were drunk and that no other verdict will ever exist! Dionysus, we are not guilty. We are culpable of nothing other than destiny being impaled! This is the liver, the life. These are my lungs, my running shoes and socks that I plan to wear, timing is proof enough, is a heartbeat set aside for now, like a perfect flat sea, a coastline, the delicate middle of the Mexican Gulf, an oil platform and three ducks suddenly pecking between the toes. I've watched them arrive... I've named them after three of my favorite roads (Tiny Beaches, Ul. Piastow, and La Rambla). La Rambla is the least afraid, carries a smirk and has three pecks before going for the emptiness of my hands... Tiny Beaches isn't too far behind, is peckish too, but Ul. Piastow moves much slower, seems older and stands as though waiting on guard. I return to the cottage for some bread, I run all morning with a kind-of amused glance, a sip of G&T along an appreciative shoreline. I swallow pieces of a hot dog bun, sand and water inveigle me. I return twice without the knowledge of hope or experimentation, without knowing which couch I would have preferred, which piece of meat or unbuttered grain (êtes vous heureux? Steph might ask). The panic of my abrupt discoveries would leave me, I would clean the sand, and the chairs that know desire cannot be overwhelmed by suffering. I would expect no meal, no reward. Later on someone will join me, a dog that scratches maybe, or a cultured bee hunting for something I have already poured from my loins! A queen. A worker. We are all tied to distinctions of colour, gravity, and graves. We are all destined to return, to doubt. What if, Sharon would say, that hill didn't move? I am alone. I have piled wood by the sauna, have emptied glasses and their sticky remains. What comes of nothing is nothing but thirst. We've all believed in a different god, in something more simple, one foot in front of the other? The fear is when you stumble, when a stick cuts you from below... ah yes, there is always time for a game, a seven iron or a wedge, and the disruption of a sterile factory, feathers. oh the players! They are phantoms who cannot be praised enough... watch, from here, from warm lugubrious wood, from the top of a building in one of Budapest's trampled squares. Where am I going now? home to Munich, or somewhere I haven't gone? What brave absurdity brought me this sham of a keyboard? I was talking about a god (n'est-ce pas? Steph would cajole.), I was praying for less storms, less bends in the atmosphere, yet it seems there are too many comparisons here. I am relaxed now, counting the judgements I needn't exploit: the skin on an onion that leaves no sentiment, Cebula from a foreign tongue. I don't care if anyone understands -- THIS(?), this is only an exercise, a work-out perhaps, and the weekend I describe has swam and paddled past many seas, has begun to imbibe like an afternoon amid a faraway reverent throng. What's for dinner the reader might say, how many people for your table? glasses for wine? Oh it's true, I never need understanding, I never find gold or spices like the Marco Polo of Strausbourg, the sailing spaghetti Bolognaise, but what if this meat were maddening? How many underlings would understand the underground is undergoing an undetermined and underhanded amount (of) undergrowth? HaHa, LMAO! And you thought I was only doing the crossword. 23 across: beginning of a quote by yet another American hoo-haa foreign exploder! Infamous hehe! Getting giddy perhaps, watching for the dog that likes to pee on people and chairs, only the dry ones too! 11 down: SPHERE! I'm watching Bill's shoulder as it has a projection of the horizon and his brother's helicopter rides. do you know what acrylic lightbulb just went out behind the red felt ropes of the gallery. oh my, this landscape is composure. (77 across: fleur de ____, Steph might know). There's no hiding the wind or bad roads around Eagle Lake, gravel contusions, rutted slices of the city that do not stop for a poor stranded biker, age slowing down... canine pisser, HOC gradation? I'm at a loss for that which envelopes a long forgotten answer. Return to hot dogs and not enough buns. Like they say, the early duck gets the weiner? Ha ha! It must be the moment when a beer opens and all the girls in that Slovakian pub roll their eyes. Rolling, rolling, rollin' isn't that Will in the cabin with a piece of chalk, a golf-pencil holder, extra-curricular exam! I might fail too, I'm only an expert in meeting young women with boyfreinds (you'd like him, Emese might say). Jealous anyone? Oh I could go on forever, I could go on to forget my many generous loves, how temporarily moving they became, (anything else, Sarah might say, see you at the pool). The idea is to hide one's autobiographical pride, a swamp beneath a pine forest, a poem that returns from a patch of unlamentable dew:


Running the Coast

12. Lake B****, S******dge


Don't run anymore, quiet shoreline, lure of steam,
water warmer than air, nervous hand tightening the lace
in an old shoe: one of those not used on good pavement,
(in a race unknown?).

Don't listen to the eyes: blind as a mounted bass,
a cottage dim without movement or pearl-gray light
as still as the concrete intersection from which
you arrived.

Don't let the first few steps humble vermillion toes,
a coil of bark-black whiskers swept
by an onshore breeze, a bottle half-filled with smoke
and the testament of lungs.

Don't run anymore, and make your accomplices
say, "he wasn't here when we awoke!"
Let them smile and talk openly about pets and cars,
(metal and fur), about a synapse that never fades.

Let their voices divide the echoes of grateful tongues,
bread spackled by sand or a cocktail half-gone.
Don't stiffen the legs with calculations loosely held:
how far to go, how steep the hill that hasn't been made.



Interlude. Enter Louie? It must be evening again, and the worst game of billiards this side of the Wrzesnia train station. May I leave my back-pack here and search for the woman I love? Oh how contrite is the wounding of pride, the fangs of one's longest laments. I've read old poets and reviews of poems about clotheslines and crooked necks, I've returned to the scene of my only crime... what if I didn't really love her? Perhaps the wine has fleshed me out, has discarded my sanity and the remedy of a statue dedicated to Athena. Daphne was a nymph? Myrtle mortal in the temple of the Titans... clouds descending like ivy and a chariot drawn by panthers, wet souls, (il pleut, Steph might say)... and the wind so tempting. I've devoured a collage more suitable for Graustarkian eyes, romance, I've hitched a long untenable wagon. The wheels of lust and lariats guide sincere evidence, frightening imageries perhaps, but they say we can handle it. Grab the wheel and helm... and I awake again to another day, remember that last night I was walking the beach alone, under the influence of a greater sphere, under the cogs of mischief and surprise. The early morning is not as cold as anticipated, but it's cloudy again, brief glimpses of sun are culled from the trees behind the cottage. It's windy too, very much so, out of the south and east, not a good direction for these parts I believe. I'm thinking it's Sunday and somewhere, perhaps in an earlier time zone, people are planning a weekly guidance to the church or golf course. I'm thinking they don't have ducks pecking between their toes again. "Not so easy this time," I say to La Rambla, not so fast I say to Tiny Beaches, and what's wrong, why so melancholy? I say to Ul. Piastow... and it quacks in disbelief, disavowing my supposed superiority... and I return on the wide rambling path to the kitchen of the cottage thinking all the time of J., Sarah, Sylvia and Sara, and I remember Sylvia walking along a Northumberland Street sidewalk, smiling as she confessed to once picking her nose. She was wearing freshly plucked rose coloured pumps and a flower printed dress, lilacs maybe, and we were going to meet her father at a B&B near the university. The confession ended when she stepped on a piece of plywood that had been placed across the concrete, an orange cone on one end, construction perhaps, the plywood bent concavely and tilted towards the road. She slipped and yelled, her balance altered even more by the squeal of her voice and new shoes, I grabbed her hand and swung her safely around, and we fell together onto the grass on the other side --- she was on top, not dirty, and I was wearing a good white shirt (green tie) --- for some reason I had forgotten about that til now --- and now I remember Sylvia saying (unknowingly) later that same night that her friend Sara "has the flattest chest"... I didn't respond then? Suddenly I'm back at the shoreline holding pieces of a bagel two feet off the ground. La Rambla is jumping feverishly pecking away until he has a large piece, Tiny Beaches jumps too, but his efforts are weak and low and I have to lower the bagel and drop a piece into his mouth. Ul. Piastow stands closer to the water waits until the other two disappear with their catch, perhaps he or she is the oldest? Oldest, kindest, purplest, and now I see the bottles from last night and the fire that wasn't, maybe the teeny girls were drinking smoke. Maybe the pipes were loaded... (au contraire, Steph might say), and eggs bacon and spoons have made a casserole in the darkness beneath this blanket. I'm still cold. The phlegm of the streetlights in town (across the water) is a hook for the fish that all those who leave will not catch. I'm willing to wait it out... to succeed in a different shore, context, I'm willing to eat and nap, and conjure munificence! Oh bland wall, spider web, dust from the ancient way of trousers and sandals, of cars with round giant steering wheels, a man in a cordoruy hat and a woman who works where she's not "supposed to" -- were you the first couple to kiss in the front seat? To say good-bye, "have a nice day at work", and drive off? Were you the first to grace the morning in a chorus of grave frustration? No, it cannot be, not here, not now in this driveway, this cool and windy yet soothing afternoon! Another evening bestows games beginning anew, DODGE-ball done in a bathing sweat, long skin and shadows of momentary glee... another glass of wine modelling the short ropes and sails that cover white waves.