Tuesday Poem: “A Weirdly Whispering Wind” — Stanzas 227 to 234

Res Publica, Book One, Canto the Third

How our narrator, waking safely on his island, celebrates his survival – but then, to his despair, discovers an unexpected hatchling . . .

Marc Ellis, former New Zealand rugby star and founder of Charlie's Juice company, streaking at a provincial rugby match in 2007.

227.

Delirious dreams. A raw and painful
sun aroused me. I do not mean
the sun itself was shining; the scene
to which my sore – but proud, disdainful –
body now awoke was shadow-less;
the sky in pure white doctor’s dress,
the sun a stethoscopic metal
on a ghastly patient pressed.
So has his heartbeat finally settled?
Is the air back in his chest?
And still those taunting words – raw
and pain and sun. And kelp. I saw
no kelp, yet seemed to feel it round me.
How strange such words should so confound me.

228.

Where were they coming from? I wrestled
free of that well-fettered spot
– for seeking warmth, my legs were caught
by several nets in which they’d nestled.
I staggered up and looked around.
Tug’s twisted crane, like sniffing hound
in stiffened point, had found the very
spot where once the albatross
had looked at me with dark and wary
eyes. And there ol’ Tug had tossed
her smokestack pipe, which looked just like
a great harpooner’s skillful strike.
(What jokester muse to blame, that whaling
spawns the double-rhyme – impaling?)

229.

And there – untouched, untroubled – my planted
flag, all droop and drag, still stood
amongst the scraps of splintered wood
and strewn debris of disenchanted
dunnage. A truant, upturned drawer
of knives. And scattered on the shore
some tanks of water. A book (which heartened,
for it had landed someplace dry):
Melville’s Typee. A Charlie’s carton¹⁰⁸
of juice (a mate of mine, that guy),
remarkably full, yet slightly scrunched
as if it had been stomach-punched.
Some happy news: my one-way shipment
had safely delivered my camp equipment.

Herman Melville: 'A book (which heartened, / for it had landed someplace dry): / Melville’s Typee

230.

A tent. A bed. Some cargo had drifted
out to sea while I was lost
in throbbing dreams. A minor cost.
I couldn’t help feel but I’d been gifted
my life! This land! I scooped some sand
and kissed it! O all the dreams I’d planned,
my country! Our fate would be debated
in parliament – or parlia-tent
I should say – on my inflated
mattress, with me, just me, to represent
myself, a population of one.
To hold an election (and know I’d won!).
To write, to pass, to sign a treaty
sent by bottle to Tahiti;

231.

to draft new laws each year but never
let them pass, then on a whim
to check an imbalance, or take a swim
– or take a shit! And so forever
to break from Samuel Johnson’s rule
(that Republics are governed by more than one fool)¹⁰⁹
A single fool I’d be with numerous
voices in my head. This struck
me as so credible, so humorous,
a wave of laughter felled me. What luck,
to go insane before my camp
was made, amongst these tattered, damp,
remains of my absurd intentions!
The mind must check its own inventions.

232.

But just as I was pacifying
these befuddling thoughts, I heard
those words again. What fish or bird
or god was speaking? I tried replying:
‘Raw!’ I shouted. ‘How raw my pain!
Where is the sun?’ – and in this vein
I tried conversing with that crazy
agent in my head, but soon
survival’s sunbeam cleared my hazy
thoughts. The rainy afternoon
detained me long beneath a torn
and trembling tarp. And when the storm
had passed, that eerie voice was silent.

‘Concussions make our thoughts turn violent.’

233.

That’s what I thought, my dear! Some knocking
of my head it must have been!
Some damage to the wit within
had made me hear some spirits talking
(while giving them such little speech;
no more than fi ve or six words each).
It wasn’t until the following morning,
when truly the sun appeared – a pink
electrifying sort of warning
bulb, for how it flashed and blinked
as it prepared for its ascent –
that I began to think, would I invent
such words? And not until that strobing
sun matured, and I was probing

234.

through the wreckage for some cooking
gear and kindling, did I decide
those words were more than mumbling tide
or weirdly whispering wind; and looking
for their source might give me peace
of mind. The murmurs, however, had ceased
a while. I fed on Tim-Tams.¹¹⁰ Then heard it
– ‘Kelp! O kelp!’ – muffled, yet clear.
I scanned the land where I inferred it
must be coming from. Just near
a crate filled with tin cans, a drum
of what I thought was oil had come
to rest. Or rather, not quite. That liver-
colored drum – I saw it shiver!

Samuel Johnson c. 1772, painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds: 'to break from Samuel Johnson’s rule / (that Republics are governed by more than one fool)'

¹⁰⁸ Charlie’s Not From Concentrate (NFC) Orange Juice was co-founded by the New Zealand rugby league and rugby union player, Marc Ellis (born 1971). He is also a television celebrity known for – as this editor’s Kiwi colleague puts it – ‘somehow stepping outside the natural time continuum and doing adult things, such as running a business, hosting sport and travel shows, while never looking, or acting, older than 20. And thus, his youthful indiscretions, such as buying illegal party drugs, or talking on television about “sweating like a rapist,” or encouraging streakers to disrupt a televised sporting event, are usually forgiven as typical Kiwi “lad” behavior.’
¹⁰⁹ Samuel Johnson, in his Dictionary of the English Language (London, Walker and Co, new edition, 1853, page 536), defines the word Republick: ‘state in which the power is lodged in more than one.’
¹¹⁰ Produced by Arnott’s, the Tim Tam is made up of two dry, brown biscuits separated by chocolate cream and dipped in chocolate. For some reason, each package of Tim Tams contains exactly 11 biscuits, which requires the breaking of one biscuit to equitably share the entire package between two people.

__________
Zireaux’s comments on these stanzas
And so at last the relevance of our title — Res Publica — becomes clear: ‘A state in which power is lodged in more than one.’

To recap: Our narrator has discovered a tiny island. He’s claimed it as his own. He’s packed up a boat, set off by himself to live out the rest of his life upon that little rock amidst the open sea. But as he nears the island, in heavy swells, he finds no place to land his boat. He doesn’t want to turn back. His life on the mainland is miserable. He decides, instead, to crash his boat upon the island’s frothy shores. A shipwreck, by god — and lo! He survives! With no way to return (the boat is destroyed); and isn’t that wonderful? Alone on his island at last! “Just me, to represent / myself, a population of one. / To hold an election (and know I’d won!).” He celebrates his conquest, his solitude, his absolute power.

But then, he thinks he hears a voice — words like raw and pain and sun and kelp. And then, in the final lines of stanza 234, one of the oil drums from the shipwreck begins to move. ‘That liver- / colored drum – I saw it shiver!’ (Next week we’ll learn what’s inside).

A note about Melville’s Typee: I’m of the opinion that Typee, the great whale-man’s first book, provided an inspiration for Wells’s The Time Machine. Both stories involve an encounter with two tribes, one cannibal, the other peaceful. Both Wells’s “Time Traveller” and Melville’s narrator (Herman playing himself) are responsible for the death of a beloved member of their host tribe. Both, at certain stages, become violent toward their hosts and disconsolately question their own behavior. And both find innocent, loving female concubines who help massage away their despair.

I can’t think of a better book than Typee, a favorite of my youth, to survive on the island of Res Publica. (Although you’ll recall that while preparing for his trip, Arcady packed Apsley Cherry-Gerrard’s The Worst Journey in the World, another work which no doubt survived the shipwreck).

Speaking of inspiration, I encourage you to visit the Tuesday Poets at tuesdaypoem.blogspot.com.

 

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Tuesday Poem: “The Artist’s Hand” — Stanzas 218 to 226

'Atolls a-tolling:' The American Carrier, the USS Enterprise, under attack in the battle of Guadalcanal, the Solomon Islands, 1942.

Res Publica, Book One, Canto the Third

218.

To land! To land was all that mattered!

‘You see her, Tug? That brief expanse
of bronzy rock that seems to dance
upon the sea?’

                                Tug’s engine clattered
wistfully as we both spied
ahead; and watched my island ride
the waves – a small, enchanted saddle
strapped to bucking Neptune’s back;
and me, rough-rider, keen to straddle
her and break her in. Attack!
Attack! Tug’s engine revved, then roared;
and sent a shudder through the boards
beneath my feet; as I stood quaking
there, and felt her throttle shaking

219.

within my grip, a nervous partner,
a rapid step, an empty floor,
a final dervish dance before
carnassial rocks would rip apart her
flesh and mine. But straight we sped,
my island pitching less, more spread
across as we grew nearer.
I tell you, reader, we never see
life’s true dimensions clearer
– a sudden sense of symmetry;
an end to mirror the start – as when
our minds, at last, can comprehend
the time and place of our conclusion.
The vividness of life’s illusion!

220.

The sudden poignancy of every
moment, the way each tiny part’s
a perfect fit, just as great art
appears extempore, a random reverie,
when, in truth, it’s neatly planned;
and O, to glimpse the artist’s hand,
its careful, loving intervention
is the essence that defines
a genius! (And not that foul contention
made by preachers who opine
the hand’s divine, and much too strong
to be critiqued, or proven wrong.)
We do not mourn our death. The grieving
which occurs when we, perceiving

221.

all at once the sharp, meticulous
details of life, and how they all,
those trillion puzzle pieces, fall
in place the moment our ridiculous
end is reached – that grieving’s meant
not for ourselves. No. We lament
the waste of so much concentration
by our honest maker. We mourn
this artist’s sense of desolation;
the pain through which our world is born
and raised. The mighty precision! It’s clear,
so clear to one near death: the sheer
artistic effort! The more enchanted
is life, the more we take it for granted.

222.

The wind tried hard to hold me back; it
madly wiped my tears and filled
my ears with caution – ‘You’ll be killed!’ –
and made a mainsail of my jacket,
which spasmed, crackled, slapped my face
with its loose collar. That airy embrace
was steady, strong, but lacked the muscular
pluck of swarthy Tug, who rammed
me through each wave in that crepuscular
spread of sparkling violet jam.
How thick a sea can seem to one
whose journey – whose life – is almost done;
how far each wave, how long each second,
when one’s demise is finally reckoned!

Japanese 'Kate' drops a torpedo on the USS Carrier Hornet in the battle of Guadalcanal.

223.

And as my Tug reached full velocity;
then my isle began to charge,
a monster baring blackish, large
and drool-smeared teeth, with a ferocity
never had I fathomed of
that fledgling land for which such love
I held. The island rushed right at us.
I heard what sounded like a case
of stomach gas, a rumble of flatus
rippling through Tug’s belly. I braced
against the portside rail with hands
that didn’t let go when we struck land.
And what a blow! As if the ocean
could not bear our ship’s commotion

224.

and wished to smash us into pieces
just to stop our god-awful drone.
Imagine water turned to stone,
or newborn lamb whose fleece is
suddenly changed to armor plate
– that’s how it was. Our hurling weight
from softest substance smacked that lithic,
steadfast island with a boom
unheard across the South Pacific
since Japan’s torpedoes doomed
the Hornet and the Enterprise¹⁰⁷
near islands named to honor a wise
Hebraic King! Atolls a-tolling!
Great moments in history are rarely consoling.

225.

What followed: A marvelous, crepitating
crunch; and then a cannonade
of sundry ware like grapeshot sprayed
into a foe – the navigating
gear, the kitchenette, a fridge,
straight through the window of the bridge;
the cabin detonated, spreaders
hurled ahead like monstrous spears,
a flurry of steel, as through a shredder,
wailed and whistled past my ears;
the radar vaulted from the ship
which left its steely chains to whip
about in wild, tentacular furry.
The rest, for me, is somewhat blurry.

226.

Until I found myself, still gripping
the rail, still prostrate on the deck,
still part of that spectacular wreck,
with bitter tasting liquid dripping
on my cheek (a mix of sea
and diesel fuel). Not far from me:
a large, much-dented brown container
which, a moment before, had lain
in Tug. The keel had split in twain her
hold, and there she rested, slain,
a disemboweled fish, or whale,
with box-shaped organs, steel entrails
all scattered around. The rocks were bleeding
her fuel. My mind, in sleep, receding. . .

¹⁰⁷ The Hornet and the Enterprise were American aircraft carriers assigned to guard the sea approaches to Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands during World War II. The Hornet still floated after receiving nine torpedoes and more than 400 rounds of shell fire from the destroyers Mustin and Anderson. The Enterprise proved equally indomitable, and although badly bombed by the Japanese in August and October, 1942, she still launched planes against enemy ships in November.

__________

Joan Didion

Zireaux’s comments on these stanzas
If the quality of poetry can be measured by the delight the poet takes in re-reading the lines long after their genesis, then I can confirm, my dear readers and critics, that these are some wonderful stanzas.

We lament / the waste of so much concentration / by our honest maker.

It strikes me that the narrator of my latest novel (a book now at the mercy of the publishing gods) says something similar as he observes a photo of his family just moments before attempting to shoot himself:

“A surge of grief — not for myself, or for my loss, but for the waste of so much love invested in the long creation of me.”

In Joyce’s “The Dead,” it’s not the dead that we lament. Death is courteous and dignified and refreshingly aloof to opinion polls or party gossip. We lament, rather, the little workings of life, the intricacies of creation, the passion and patience of the artist’s hand that plays a long-remembered song on the piano, or lays a table with “minsters of jelly,” “bunches of purple raisins and peeled almonds,” “a small bowl full of chocolates and sweets wrapped in gold and silver papers and a glass vase in which stood some celery stalks.”

(Joyce, by the way, places these celery stalks on the table to emphasize the bland, well-mannered, upright, overly-intellectual nature of his protagonist, Gabriel, “who never ate sweets.”).

These sweets, these dinner parties, these offerings on the table — however hard we try, we can never fully appreciate, or capture, or reciprocate for the wondrous workings of creation. What is more devastating than that?

Joan Didion expresses the unbearable anguish of this dilemma in her latest memoir, Blue Nights: “There was a period,” she writes, “a long period, dating from my childhood until quite recently…during which I believed that I could keep people fully present, keep them with me, by preserving their mementoes, their ‘things,’ their totems.” But ultimately these collections become the “the detritus of…misplaced belief,” serving “only to make clear how inadequately I appreciated the moment when it was here.”

 

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Tuesday Poem: “Goodbye to My Wife” — Stanzas 212 to 217

Res Publica, Book One, Canto the Third

‘Her black stilettos / stepping from her matching black / convertible Beamer.’

212.

The mist had passed. Now I was waking
to my Avalon, aware
I’d left behind my worldly cares
to win this heavenly realm. No taking
of life or breaking of hearts could here
occur; so what had I to fear?

The past was mist. Now I was turning
round my faithful Tug. She sighed
and moaned, she did (as if discerning
my intent), while I began to guide
her back into the misty glare
where waves in tinseled eveningwear
awaited dusk’s bewitching hour . . .
reminding me . . . My wife! How sour

213.

she’ll be! I pictured black stilettos
stepping from her matching black
convertible Beamer.¹⁰⁶ She’s early back
from work. The pair of plump palmettos
salute her in the dying rays
of salmon-color light which seem to paint,
by chance, a more authentic layer
upon that pseudo-mission house.
And as – a virtuoso player! –
she chins her diary, my spouse
sifts through her Gucci purse, all rush
and flush and sun-emblazoned blush.
The giant mission bell observes her.
It seems to know what will unnerve her.

214.

For after all that house-key sifting
– a small, askew, white envelope
resides on parquet floor:

                                                  I hope,
my dear, you’ll find these words reviving
if, perchance, your heels have slipped
on this – this note – and you have flipped
and knocked your head, or ripped a nylon
– or worse, that Prada denim skirt
you bought in Paris. I see no smile on
your face. Come on. It’s joy, not hurt,
I wish to offer now: You’re free!
Yes, free! That oath you gave to me
I cancel; and grant you, with this letter,
rights to men who suit you better!

215.

‘He always does this when I need – ’ O
how upset she’d be without
her handbag spouse to tote about!
My cummerbund, my white tuxedo,
they’d have to fit another mate
– and soon! – or else she’d activate
those deeply diagnostic articles
found in all the Women’s press,
the ones which scan your every particle
for tell-tale signs of grief or stress.
To go alone? She might as well
not shave her underarms and smell
of fish! This thought would deeply vex her.
Her phone is voice-dialed: ‘Dexter! Dexter!’

216.

But let us leave her to her scheming,
my gentle reader. This sudden flash
of marital thoughts came from my rash
(but firm) and contradictory-seeming
retreat. I’d turned back home, back west,
as if relinquishing my quest
to claim that resolute and armor-
plated isle. Okay, if she’s
afraid, poor island, I shall not harm her . . .
But then – with frothy surge of sea
I spun the wheel round! I’d say
we were about a mile away
when once again her rocks were glimmering
– like foam upon a milk-pot simmering –

217.

straight before our eyes. A minute’s
rest I granted faithful Tug,
then squeezed her wheel, a farewell hug.
The Eastern sky now held within it
fragments of a moon whose case
had cracked and now it leaked through space
a stream of pale magenta vapors.
It felt unreal. A sailor in a dream!
My boat made out of folded paper!
Goodbye dear Tug! So frail she seemed.
It pained to think of her demise,
but it was easy to surmise
I’d die as well – and thus, undaunted,
I chose for two the fate one wanted.

¹⁰⁶ Fashionable nickname of cars made by the German-based Bayerische Motoren Werke (BMW).

 

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“Tug of War” — Stanzas 206 to 211

Res Publica, Book One, Canto the Third

In which the narrator describes how he left his wife and journeyed to his new island on a boat he named The Tug of War . . .

Rachel Hunter

206.

I finished packing the last container,
a misty, sterile, mid-afternoon
in ’96, the first of June,
and climbed aboard an old Purse-Seiner¹⁰³
I’d bought with cash six weeks before
and boldly christened: The Tug of War.
A creaky, big-beamed girl with solid
timber hull (like you, my love!).
A group of friends and dock-mates all did
wish me well, while I, above,
on greasy, rain-slicked deck, between
the winch and hydra-crane did wean
my babe from birth. The motor thundered.
My waiving crowd, they must have wondered:

207.

‘What type of fellow takes the dollars
granted by a doting, dead,
rich uncle [to hide the truth, I’d said
my uncle had died] and buys a trawler?’

‘Either he’s a man inspired
– in which case he should be admired –
or he’s obsessed; indeed, fanatical.’

‘Mad, no doubt. At his young age.
In that rust-bucket.’

                                            ‘Who takes sabbatical
from a life with weekly wage
paid by a wife as rich and hot
as Rachel Hunter?’¹⁰⁴ (I told them not
to tell my wife I’d left).

                                            ‘Once gone, ’em
bludgers’ll move in.¹⁰⁵ But hey, good on ’im!’

208.

Then as the water’s rippling arrow
prodded forth my Tug of War
and drove me from the sand-rimmed shore
(which rising tide made extra narrow),
the mist spray-painted the scene behind
an ashen grey. My burning mind
was cauterized of doubt. I only
thought of what lay forward. The isle,
those rocks, the albatross – that lonely
bird whose sanctum I’d defiled.
To make amends, I’d packed some fish,
some frozen herring (I’d partly wished
we might be friends, that I could feed it)
but it turned out that I wouldn’t need it.

209.

My darling rock, however, was waiting
at the rendezvous, as we’d
agreed. And trusty Tug – her speed
reduced, her engine room pulsating,
her pale white skin all varicose veined
with squiggly patches of rust – remained
on dutiful course; and soon that gentle
mottled hump of earth appeared
amidst the twitching, temperamental
sea. But just as I had feared,
that lovely rump, that winsome curve
of land which thrilled me to observe,
and filled me with the urge to snuggle,
put up a wanton virgin’s struggle.

210.

Upon her sea-bed, my sweet, seductive,
callipygian maid there lay
with haunches daringly displayed;
yet when I groped, her sharp obstructive
rocks began to lash and swipe – and spit.
Alas (shy thing!), she didn’t permit
my larger, unfamiliar vessel
a place to mount (the way she’d let
my smaller skiff so smoothly nestle
midst her crags the night we’d met).
I lewdly circled – a bachelor Sheikh,
with trailing, gold-trimmed robe my wake.
I stopped, then tried to wrestle closer,
perhaps to better diagnose her.

211.

But no! The surging sea (now higher).
My growing desire to land. The slap
of tide against her loins. Though gaps
and fissures caught my probing eyes, her
chiseled features wouldn’t dilate
for me. I trust you won’t berate
me, reader – a lesser ship; a greater
number of trips. I know. You’re right.
I could have saved some loads for later
and tamed my bride without the fight.
But as I’ve said before: My mind
is not – was not – that common kind:
a mind that plans, is shrewd and tactical.
When life means nothing, why be practical?

¹⁰³ A fishing boat that carries large fishing nets (seines) which are drawn in the shape of a bag (purse) to haul up catch onto the deck.
¹⁰⁴ Rachel Hunter (born 1969), New Zealand-born fashion model, actress, TV personality, and former wife of rock star Rod Stewart (born 1945).
¹⁰⁵ Bludgers is apparently New Zealand slang for someone who ‘bludges’ or sponges off other people or the government, as in ‘dole bludger’ (ref. ‘Dictionary of Kiwi Slang’, by Dave McGill).

__________
Zireaux’s comments on these stanzas
Thank you John, A.J., Helen and Penelope for the comments and wishes.

A lace monitor (Varanus varius) in Byfield National Park

A few days break last week, after the long delivery of one of the five novels — non-identical quintuplets — kicking in my head. Walks in the outback, with xenicas, ringlets, browns, tortoiseshells, coppers, blues, swordgrass swallowtails, giant skippers, kookaburras, rosellas, black cockatoos, a sky clouded with little red beetles and dragonflies, and an enormous goanna, a monitor lizard (six feet long?) halfway up a tree, entirely conspicuous, but believing itself invisible to my eyes.

I snapped a digital image of the monitor, but, strangely, you can hardly see the creature in the photo, as if to confirm the instinctive hyperbole of our imagination, the genesis of phantasmagoria — dragons, gorgons, anthropophagi — found on 14th century maps. An image taken from Wikipedia, however, confirms the lizards’s tree-hugging propensity, if not its enormity (you’ll have to trust me).

 

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A New Novel by Zireaux for 2012

Happy New Year

We just received a new prose novel from Zireaux. It’s about a famous writer’s last book — his 98th book.

Mystery, violence, adventure, sexual intrigue — it’s got it all.

As one of the characters in the book puts it: “I can’t think of a biography subject more captivating than a stark raving mad artist living on a remote island — with a gun in his hands.”

Apparently people all around the world are commemorating the completion of the novel with some fireworks tonight. We weren’t expecting that, but we appreciate the gesture.

Wishing you all a happy 2012!

“A Slow Backstroke in Heaving Seas” — Stanzas 200 to 205

'A slow back-stroke / in heaving seas.' Image by Bernd Nies (www.nies.ch)

Res Publica, Book One, Canto the Third

200.

And O that unctuous, lubricating
mud! Your breasts like oysters glossed
in scrumptious espagnole sauce;
but what I found most loin-inflating
was how your crevices were filled
up each with mire. And how I thrilled
to sound their depths, my plumpus corpus!
To feel around your blubber-spheres
my darling whale. . .

                                   ‘!’

                                          ‘Okay then, porpoise.’

‘My panties were on. And my brassiere.
You say you’re not, in truth, a bard;
but such a claim is truly hard
to believe. Such lyrical agility
does damage to your credibility.’

201.

‘Would we be hiding here, my mistress,
if I was so sincere? While I’m
digressing aimlessly in rhyme
(which critics will deem both “thrilling” and “listless”)
my crime stays unconfessed. I said
my story’s true. Had I, instead,
claimed I was always true, plain-speaking,
that I was empty of desire
and never scheming or self-seeking,
what sort of trust would I inspire?
Our reader has been kind. To give
some lodging to a fugitive.
And if I claimed I’m sheriff here,
the daemon-hunting seraph here,

202.

then who’d believe me? When I mistreated
such kind, affectionate parents who cared
so much for me they weren’t prepared
to let me go? When I retreated
from their lives, their only son,
declared my marriage over-done?
And when, in hospital, my mad-bitch
wife now lies, while I this old
refuge inhabit, a writer’s pad which
thrills the literati (who hold
their parties here, extol the man,
as if his life were greater than
his books. Their parties, of course, just frighten
his ghost, who just wants peace to write in)

203.

– inhabit with a large but nimble
lover, not to mention a ghost
who types all night but writes, at most,
the vaguest imprint, some unknown symbol
upon an unturned roller . . . ’

                                                     ‘What time
you’re wasting, Arcady! Two dozen lines
for what? You sure digression’s stanzas
are worth it? Readers may find
these maundering extravaganzas
signs the poet must be broke.’

‘A rest, my love. A slow back-stroke
in heaving seas. Must I forever
crawl and kick in this endeavor?

204.

Besides, you cheat me of some credit
here. A hill requires ridges, crags
– not height alone – if it’s to snag
the best of climbers. If hikers tread it
easily, how can it earn
respect? So too these lyrics turn
into an epic if digression
rifts and cleaves the reader’s path.’

‘ . . . and such a candid, cool confession
may incur your readers’ wrath!
And turn them to a simpler book.
Be practical! Without a hook,
why fish at all? What good is carving
couplets when your body’s starving?

205.

Not to mention mine! I’m tempted
to write your story myself! Its start
and end I know. It’s just the part
between from which I was exempted.’

‘What’s there to tell? I started, a baby,
like everyone else. I lived. I lied.
I made a fortune. Others died.
Finis. What else is there? What matters
is now – and you – your lovely tears
and how, sometimes, they’ll even splatter
on the floor! What’s seven years
of life compared to that? To see
a tear emerge is bliss to me.
To touch it, divine. But O, to kiss it,
or hold it on my tongue – exquisite!’

__________
Zireaux’s comments on these stanzas
No comments. Just wishing you all a happy holiday season.

 

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“On Making Muddy Love to My Muse” — Stanzas 194 to 199

Res Publica, Book One, Canto the Third

How the narrator’s memory is interrupted by his new guest (who’s now moved in with him), and how the two of them make muddy love beneath a lemonwood . . .

The Birth of Venus by Sandro Botticelli, ca. 1485 'It's not / some dreamy Aphrodite's snot / I seek.'

194.

She says to me:
                              ‘But could those veiling
drops of unwiped liquid block
that inner sense, that visceral shock
a father feels whose child is ailing?
And if he did not see your stare,
I’m sure he felt you sitting there.’

My hackles raise. I want to scold her:
‘If you insist on resting your chin,
then use my lap and not my shoulder!’

It’s been twelve days since she moved in.
Twelve days since pestilent despair
was banished from this refuge where
I had, till then, worked so impassively.
But with her here – and here so . . . massively –

195.

I find myself much more attracted
to this, this perfumed present tense,
than to those pungent, brackish scents
I smell each time my past’s enacted.
For O! What waves of pure delight
enveloped me the other night
when Nutmeg’s face, all streaked with juices
met my straining, harrowed eyes!
She still had nasty scars and bruises
round her stomach, arms and thighs –
but O! Her face! Her lovely face!
A huge full-moon with ample space
for all her features – stern and succulent,
weepy, broad, infirm and truculent.

196.

‘But did I say you could explore them?
[She interrupts again!] What type
of man is so excited to wipe
a woman’s nose? A website for them
must be somewhere on the Net,
with images of shiny, wet
and raw-pink nostrils!’

‘Let prudes rebuke us!’
I say. ‘Your breasts are glorious, true.
But O to see them gleam with mucus,
dimpled with your body’s dew –
O lovely, leaking darling! It’s not
some dreamy Aphrodite’s snot
I seek. It’s yours I find delicious.
Your body’s sweeter when lubricious.

197.

When we roll about in dripping
glands and rheum-anointed skin;
and all that sloppy ooze within
is offered for my famished sipping;
and my embrace is, truth be known,
more slip than grip, as flesh and bone
dissolve into a slick erotic
slime, a kind of primal brew
that’s – help me, rhyme – that’s amniotic!

Last week, the howling rain, do you
recall it? The way our love-born scents
into a single, fetid blend condensed;
your screams, though bold, all peaceful, quiet,
as night time is when crickets riot.’

198.

But, reader – Ms. Gleesome’s heart. We sank it.
That quilt she loved (the one whose fame
was stitched in it by Janet Frame)¹⁰²
the karpok pillow, tartan blanket,
ancient mattress – how soon they were
a sodden clump, a ball of fur.
It was impossible to make it
tidy. O poor Ms. Gleesome! Nor could
we dress before she came. So naked
we stood there, reader! The lemonwood
our shelter. We watched her look around,
then start, as if she’d heard the sound
our hearts were making; then move nearer
to the window, her look severer,

199.

forehead pressed – like half a sandwich –
in the middle, gazing at
the lemonwood where we had sat
with clothes in hands, on gurgling land which
slurped our toes and chilled our knees.
I thought you were praying. But then you sneezed!
Again. A third.

                              ‘She’ll hear us!’ I pleaded.

But soon the window, I noticed, had cleared.
Her tall grey figure had retreated.
And then – how quickly she appeared
again! In front this time! Half-crazed.
Her out-of-joint umbrella raised.
Then down the busy street she darted
– while we our muddy love re-started.

¹⁰² The New Zealand writer Janet Frame (1924–2004) composed her first published novel, Owls Do Cry, in an old army hut in the garden of Frank Sargeson’s property. The hut was removed when part of the land was sold after Sargeson’s death, but the patchwork quilt that Janet Frame cobbled together for Sargeson’s bed remains.

__________
Zireaux’s comments on these stanzas
The final verses of Res Publica, Book One, will continue through the holiday period. No better time for poetry.

Be sure to visit the Tuesday Poets at tuesdaypoem.blogspot.com.

 

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The Survival of Hitchenism — To Christopher (13 April 1949 – 15 December 2011)

I never met Christopher Hitchens, but I once knew a doppelganger of his, a world away from England.

So similar were they — their body shape, their oratory styles, the deadpan facial expressions, their inability to produce anything of grace (dance, music, sport, nothing) apart from the astonishing fluidity of their speech — so similar were these two people that I’m inclined to consider “Hitchenism” as a kind of condition, a one-in-a-million genetic mutation, with a Hitchens holding fort in every metropolis.

A difference, though, is that this Hitchens (the famous one) had the work ethic of an ox, the doggedness of a Tasmanian devil, and most of all, the good fortune to mingle with masters in London. I’m thinking of his New Statemen chums — Amis, Barnes, Fenton, and later McEwan, Rushdie, and many others. Coming from such a pedigree, the bar of political discourse in America can’t appear any lower; or more appropriately — pugilism instead of high-jump — the Americans wear kid-gloves compared to the bare-knuckled brawls in which Hitchens was trained. His method was simple. He would out-read, out-write, out-punch you.

A mediocre stylist, said Amis of Hitchens’s early days, and when it comes to literary output, I’d agree with that. Hitchens knew art better than anyone, but like an old eunuch gazing quizzically — and often admiringly — at another man’s genitals, he could never quite produce it himself. Besides, Hitchens showed that style is one thing, sitting in the chair and writing is another. It’s not enough to think original thoughts; you must be out there fighting for territory.

At The Nation, he ground out article after article, exciting, soldierly stuff. But he was speaking to readers. His real calling, it turned out, was speaking to listeners. Jumping into the noisy American political fray, he was right at home. A “news groupie” my narrator calls him in Kamal, Book One.

Now let us not disgrace a poem
with world affairs and those who choose
– like Rush, or Chris, or even Noam –
to be the groupies of the news.

Not sure I like seeing Rush Limbaugh and Chris Hitchens in the same disparaging tetrameter, but then again, that’s where we wanted Chris to be — right in Rush’s face.

I’m a hopeless talker. When it comes to articulation, I think of myself as one those people you occasionally see trying to walk multiple dogs. A tangle of leads. Hitchens’s verbal rhetoric was a single attack dog on a vastly extendable leash, relentless, ferocious, sometimes let loose completely; and people like me admired those fangs, the carnassial tearing apart of dopey belief. We appreciated the vigilance, the bite he gave to our occasional barking thoughts.

Once the jaws clamped down, that was it. He never let go.

When it comes to death, however, one has to let go. Although if anyone could win that argument, it was Hitch (which is another reason his death is so disappointing). Then again, if “Hitchenism” is really more of a genetic condition than a character — and I think it may well be — our species is evolving his direction anyway. Toward a braver kind of thinking. We’re right behind the charge he’s led.

“He Taught Me History’s Charm” — Stanzas 189 to 193

Pyramid of Khufu (Cheops)

Res Publica, Book One, Canto the Third

189.

‘Look there!’ dear Memory alerts me.
‘Someone’s coming!’

                                    Into my seat
I sink, and see across the street
a man whose palsied posture hurts me
if I should think too long on it.
His face in shadow, poorly lit.
A stubborn child, perhaps an orphan,
holds him back. He seems to stoop.
Then sunlight makes the foundling morph, and
now I see that I’m its dupe:
That fat orange waif who makes him lag
is just a council rubbish bag.
The aged man in tie and blazer?
A sage, a god to his appraiser.

190.

He taught me history’s charm, its beauty,
mystery, moodiness and whim.
How deeply I admired him
while in his stylish shoes and suit he
walked us through a limestone room
beneath the rocks of Cheops tomb,
or took us to his nana’s village
near Beijing, where ancient times
saw Kublai Khan its houses pillage;
or helped my boyish body climb
(while other kids took tests at school)
a minaret in Istanbul!
And even now I feel his fingers,
smell the flesh where pipe-smoke lingers;

191.

see his limpid eyes – deceptive
really, of the dreamy kind,
as if engaged in life behind
the irises, and yet perceptive
too, collective, too; the orbs
in seconds steal a scene, absorb
its treasures calmly, as art collectors
seem unmoved by styles or shapes,
yet buy them; or Bollywood directors
choose a Western plot to ape,
but only if Aishwarya Rai
can lip-synch Ms. Mangeshkar’s cry.¹⁰¹
Thus father’s tranquil eyes re-rendered
all he saw with added splendor.

192.

A gust of wind. The figure lurches
forth, then drops his load, then turns
around, but rather than adjourn
back to the house, he stops and searches
– for what? A drop of rain? It comes.
A sudden spray of water drums
upon the Jaguar’s windshield, blurring
driveway, man and bright-orange pile;
and still the figure isn’t stirring
– why? He seems to stand awhile
getting wet. Then turns his head.
You’d think, with all those colors bled,
that through my window’s beaded curtain
he could not see me. But am I certain?

Lata Mangeshkar

193.

Or do I hear his voice – ‘Arcady?’
I think I hear it. But even if
he saw the car, and me, the stiff
within, what further probe he made, he
wouldn’t have recognized his son.
I’d grown a beard and had begun
to wear a Cossack’s hat of rabbit’s
fur I’d bought to keep me warm
upon the land I’d soon inhabit.

‘Let’s go,’ I say. And true to form,
my Memory obeys, and starts
the car and – faithful to my heart –
it heeds a wish I’ve left unspoken,
and drives away with wipers unwoken.

¹⁰¹ Aishwarya Rai (born 1973), winner of the 1994 Miss World beauty pageant, is a well known Bollywood film star, recently appearing in several Hollywood films as well. An Indian colleague of mine informs me that Lata Mangeshkar is 76 years old and still singing popular ‘playback’ songs for Bollywood films; that is, she sings the voice of lip-synching actresses. She is reported to have a voice that spans three octaves, and she has recorded over 50,000 songs. Many top astrologers in India, explains my colleague, claim Ms. Mangeshkar has one of India’s 10 ‘most powerful’ horoscopes of the last century.

__________
Zireaux’s comments on these stanzas
This is the end of the farewell-to-his-parents section of Res Publica, Arcady’s final day on the mainland before he sails off to his island. His island adventure now begins.

I also want to let readers know: The Kindle edition of Kamal, Book One has been reformatted and re-released.

Unlike prose novels, a novel-in-verse can be a nightmare to format. The old version, words crawling around the page like a disturbed ant colony, was almost unreadable — and here’s the irony, it was more expensive, too.

The new version has 99% of the words in their correct location, and it’s just $2.99. So if you have a Kindle — or a device that reads Kindle books — please take a moment to download Kamal, Book One.

Also, be sure to visit the other Tuesday Poets at tuesdaypoem.blogspot.com.

 

Read from the beginning of Res Publica | Listen to the audio version (read by Stuart Devenie) | Buy a signed copy of the book

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Orchard Swallowtail Butterfly (Papilio aegeus) — Female on Top

The Australian summer has arrived, country trails bursting with ants, termites, beetles, giant wasps, a flurry of common browns and tortoiseshells. You can hear the Crimson Rosellas eating in the trees, the patter of discarded husks on the pavement below.

Here are some photographs taken the other day in the garden of the guesthouse where I’m staying. This is the Orchard Swallowtail Butterfly (Papilio aegeus). Female is on top.

Orchard Swallowtail Butterfly - Papilio aegeus - Female on top

Orchard Swallowtail Butterfly - Papilio aegeus - Female on top

-Zireaux

A Pod of Dreams — Stanzas 184 to 188

The Cabbage White Butterfly. ‘The whitest of our butterflies / is lifted, shaken by the sunlight, / rolled – then lands in double twos.’

Res Publica, Book One, Canto the Third

184.

If only hearts had such devices!
Amongst the puzzle pieces made
of mottled sun and gouts of shade
and concrete cubes with grassy slices,
I lend to Memory my eyes:

The whitest of our butterflies,
is lifted, shaken by the sunlight,
rolled – then lands in double twos.⁹⁸
The walls look like they’ve seen a gunfight.
Mildew wounds of charcoal hues.
The fence, the door, all pocked with sores.
And had I come to settle scores
I might have wondered – ‘why pursue it,
when Time itself was sure to do it?’

185.

The only score I wished to settle
was pent within myself – a past
in which a score of years was cast
in sleek, untarnished, gleaming metal;
then doused one day, while I, nonplussed,
observed it all transform to rust.
And since that day the bond was broken,
I’d seen my parents just one time –
at Westfield Mall.⁹⁹ No words were spoken;
neither did their gaze catch mine.
He wore a necktie, broad felt hat;
while she in moiré sweater sat,
her hair un-dyed, untied or plaited,
flowerless and grey-striated.

186.

O painful scene! His wrinkled collar,
unlinked cuffs and mismatched tie
had all eluded mother’s eye!
They both looked hunched, and slightly smaller,
and sat in flimsy wooden chairs
at one of many granite squares
– those polished tablets of that crude sort
used to make the masses feel
the fare they eat inside a Foodcourt
is more a classy sort of meal.
And O, the way their fingers pressed
upon that granite table stressed
their grief – as if they each were hankering
for some object firm and anchoring.

187.

How frail we are, alas! How tender
is the human! Each of us
a pod of dreams we can’t discuss;
yet must, with death, these seeds surrender!
I often wonder, do they breed,
these planted dreams, in those who read
the chiseled name and numbered measure
of a life, or kneel and softly touch
the headstone’s polished granite edge, or
finding sorrow’s weight too much,
collapse upon the muddy grass
while maples shake in windy blasts,
and mangrove swamp, a corpse unsheeted,
feels the chill of tides receded,

O'Neill's Point Cemetery

188.

and out across a slab of water,
silent traffic dribbles south
into the Harbour Bridge’s mouth,
and cloudlets tumble, poplars totter,
starlings dart across a land
where all those Foodcourt tables stand
obliquely now, engravings shifting
within one’s cataracted view:

Born June 7, 1950.
Died June 3, 2002.

The speckled granite swims. How sore
lungs grow from sobbing! (Five days before
they’d filled with churning ocean water!)

Beloved Husband. Devoted Father.¹⁰⁰

⁹⁸ No doubt the Cabbage White butterfly (Artogeia rapae), which is white in color and has a pair of black spots on its forewings. Hence the ‘double twos’.
⁹⁹ The Westfield Group, which listed on Sydney’s stock exchange in 1960, claims to be the largest retail property group in the world. Westfi eld Mall, its owners claim, provides a ‘safe environment where people can meet, shop and enjoy a wide range of community facilities’.
¹⁰⁰ From the description Zireaux provides – the maples, the mangrove, the view of ‘silent traffic’ across the bay – the graveyard is most likely O’Neill’s Point Cemetery in Devonport, on Auckland’s North Shore. However, a thorough investigation of the cemetery grounds conducted both by this editor and his Kiwi guide has failed to turn up any marker with the dates and details mentioned.

__________
Zireaux’s comments on these stanzas

“Each of us / a pod of dreams we can’t discuss; / yet must, with death, these seeds surrender!”

A simple image, the dream-pod, and surprisingly hopeful, this germinating nature of death. There’s something more here, too — the idea that in holding tight our secrets, keeping them warm and sealed until we die, we create a kind of unexpected fecundity.

I hope you’ll be sure to visit the other Tuesday Poets at tuesdaypoem.blogspot.com.

 

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For What are Brains but Great Intestines? — Stanzas 177 to 183

Res Publica, Book One, Canto the Third

The narrator recalls how, ready to set sail to his island, he parked his car outside the home he grew up in – a recollection which evokes painful memories of his parents . . .

Mount Rangitoto, North Shore, Auckland

177.

Memory, in a Jaguar, gleaming,
burnished by the rain, propels
me down a North Shore lane which smells
of paint-soaked lawns and asphalt steaming,
soggy trees and burning wood,
the heady scents of childhood.
Robotically, and intersecting
– kwoosh, then slurp – to make an ‘M’,
two sweeping arms are each collecting
Ua’s ante: dazzling gems.⁹⁴
A day of rain and blazing sun,
and cars agleam with all they’ve won.
An autumn scene, all gold and garish;
the kind of day I used to cherish.

178.

Round the bay we drive. A distant
cloudburst slowly starts to spread
on Rangitoto’s cloven head
– as if it were the mount’s assistant –
a silver cloak of satin thread.
A plastic playground, washed-out red
with yellow slide; a toddler swinging
over grass so green and bright
that surely those are emeralds clinging
to each sheeny blade. The light
gives all the houses veins –
the casement joints, the rooftop drains,
the frames of windowpanes defining
lifeless blocks with blood that’s shining.

179.

One house, however – fence-bound, shaded,
armed for ancient savageries
with bristling, mace-like cabbage trees –
appears to cower, a fort degraded,
its power humbled, mana lost.
A gloomy place. Let’s steer across
the street, dear Memory, my faithful
driver.

             ‘Right here,’ I say . . .

             *             *             *

                                                         . . . I’d packed
the boat that morning – seven case-fulls
of Waikato Draught, and neatly stacked,
a crate of Speights, and five Monteith’s
with rows of Lion Red beneath;⁹⁵
(I daren’t mention the Sauvignon Blanc or
Kiwi mates might call me ‘Plonker’).

'...culinary / canned delights (of Watties’ ilk)...'

180.

And water, of course – a lot of water.
Twelve two-hundred liter tanks,
to be my island’s hydro-bank
so I could live long years a squatter;
(These giant, dirt-green plastic drums
required help from swarthy chums
to load onto my wobbling ferry);
cases, too, of powdered milk,
Weet-Bix boxes, culinary
canned delights (of Watties’ ilk),⁹⁶
dried fruits as well, and mixed diffuse
with berries of the Chinese Goose,⁹⁷
and shriveled apples, sun-baked peaches,
(pits removed for cleaner beaches);

181.

And meat? No meat. I’d thought of hauling
goats along – and sheep whose shanks
can well assuage a stomach’s angst.
I don’t find carnivores appalling,
but rather – why should beasts be forced
to live with someone so divorced
from life? They’d die of thirst, starvation,
disease while I sat idly by,
absorbed in selfish contemplation,
blind to outside stimuli;
their sorry state, each wretched bleat
I’d meet with eyes and ears effete.
For living life devoid of feeling
was what, to me, made life appealing.

182.

And books. A ton of reading matter
gave greater ballast to the hull –
sweet fruits to fill a hungry skull.
Linguistic cakes of sundry batter,
some bound soft and others hard,
from Stephen King to Cherry-Garrard
to Baudelaire, Dumas and Horace,
Byron, Poe and Kerouac,
the O.E.D., Roget’s Thesaurus,
an Atlas and an Almanac
– and, too, just as my ‘hydro-bank’
and food obliged an extra tank
to store my body’s foul expiries,
I also packed some pens and diaries.

Apsley George Benet Cherry-Garrard (1886–1959), author of The Worst Journey in the World

183.

For what are brains but great intestines?
And what are thoughts but bits of fat
absorbed or by a Blogger shat?
How lucky, reader, what’s expressed in
common writing lacks the smell
of other waste that we expel!
How loose the public’s peristalsis!
A steady stream of stench each day.
The TV’s high cholesterol is
crapped at every street café
. . . in magazines . . . at dull soirees . . .
but never mind . . .

             *             *             *

                                         . . . ‘Right here,’ I say
to Memory.

                          The car grows quiet.
For it has keys to pacify it.

If only hearts had such devices!


⁹⁴ Ua is a Maori god of rain.
⁹⁵ Waikato Draught, Speights, Monteith’s, Lion Red – all popular brands of beer in New Zealand (also see footnote 40).
⁹⁶ Watties has been manufacturing canned and frozen food products which, since 1934 ‘have been enjoyed by generations of families across New Zealand’, according to the company.
⁹⁷ Kiwifruit is a popular brand name for the Chinese gooseberry.

__________
Zireaux’s comments on these stanzas
A good choice, Cherry-Garrard. To which I’d add Edward O. Wilson. Shakespeare. John Livingston Lowes, the blossoms of Harold Bloom — for I’m thinking of a kind of nosegay here, a bouquet of books, with the pink heather petals of Proust, a burgundy-hued Boyle (T.C.), the baby’s breath of Burgess. Or maybe just a single boutonnière — Joyce in full Bloom?

And you? Which books would you take to your island, reader?

Perhaps you’ll find some inspiration in the latest selections from the Tuesday Poets?

 

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Five Hundred Thousand Dollars — Stanzas 171 to 176

The Juggler, by Marc Chagall, 1943. ‘Not theirs, but my wings now expanded; / Not they, but I could soar away / to my safe haven – while they were stranded.’

Res Publica, Book One, Canto the Third

171.

My wife was at the mirror miming
once again her double. Round
those arctic eyes, and circuit-bound,
the pencil stuck with steady timing
to its path. She did not blink.
What concentration, reader! You’d think
she was alone! She spoke didactically:

‘Deceit earns money, that is true.
So when you need to lie, lie practically.
Then people might invest in you.
The resort idea, I must confess,
is interesting. But really, unless
there’s sand, and half-naked chicks in a luau,
who’s gonna visit some Waikikamukou?⁹³

172.

And something else, this new ambition
which I’ve seen in you of late,
and which, it seems, helps animate
a stupid fool who’s missed his mission
and lost all opportunity
– I must admit, it worries me.
For what if you became successful
after I gave up on you?
The thought of it is too distressful.
So here is what I’m going to do:
A half a million dollar seed
I’ll give – to buy that boat you need
and any other sundry items.
I’ll email Dex. Then you can write him.’

172.

Dexter was her trusted banker,
spirit guide, accountant, friend,
a guy my wife preferred to spend
her evenings with; and, to be frank, her
reveries as well it seems.
(She often mumbled in her dreams.)
I’d never met him – ’cept through email
once or twice. I pictured him
a puny dunce, a hairy she-male,
cringing, dwarf-like, stingy, grim.
But maybe, I thought, he’s really nice;
and really does give good advice;
And if he called, the cell-phone’s ringing
might sound to me like angels singing.

173.

For here’s the point – five hundred thousand
dollars, right? A boat, supplies,
the peace of mind that money buys,
a chance to build a bach, carouse in
sweet, interminable time! Alone!
To be unreachable by phone,
or car, or human mouth, or legal
leash! My own! A kingdom all
my own! A private throne, a regal
zone for me to sing from! Recall
my vision, reader. The one I dreamed
some weeks before. The sky had teemed
with people fleeing, flying, leaving
me alone – while I stood grieving.

174.

Remember how my feet stayed planted
while others spread their wings and fled;
how I – naïve – was left for dead?
That nightmare now could be recanted!
Such fears, at last, I could transcend
with so much money mine to spend.
Not theirs, but my wings now expanded;
Not they, but I could soar away
to my safe haven – while they were stranded.
Of course there is, how should I say,
a time for drying wrinkled wings;
transition time, goodbyes and things;
minutiae, details – mails from Dexter –
before one fi nally sips one’s nectar.

175.

‘We’re done now, right?’ – my wife’s last question.

Yes, quite done. At last, quite done.
No more need of neutered gun,
or failed attempt at feigned aggression.
The past was past; the future mine
to build from scratch, to self-divine.

I signed and faxed what Dex presented.
Would I repay it?

                                    ‘Yes, oh yes,’
I wrote him back. ‘The deal’s cemented.’

My mind for fine-print couldn’t care less.
Such tiny, massive words – what weight
had they within my island state?
(How fast a promise turns to fiction
when placed outside its jurisdiction.)

176.

What assets could they hope to capture?
When the money came to me,
I’d spend it fast and fast I’d flee!
And once I reached my state of rapture,
what could they do? For them to act,
they’d need an extradition pact,
which I, as Emperor, wouldn’t agree to.
Three-times repay it? ‘Yes, oh yes,
That’s something, Dex, I’ll surely see to.
By the way, a small request:
Maybe we could meet someplace?
A chance to put a name to face?’

An email came, in which he answered:
‘The money has been duly transferred.’


⁹³ A New Zealand English word, referring to a mythical town meant to be the equivalent of Timbuktu (pronounced: ‘Why kick a moo cow’).

__________
Zireaux’s comments on these stanzas
We meet Dexter again, this time in the flesh, in Res Publica, Book II.

He also haunts the book I’m currently working on — a book unlike anything I’ve written, categorically unpoetic, yet fundamental in its own way to the Arcadys of Res Publica and Kamal.

We’ve met Zireaux the taxi driver (see here); and yes, Zireaux is Dexter, too. Zireaux is a venture capitalist.

But why — why lock oneself in fantasy’s farmhouse, servant to a strict routine, while spread outside are the glimmering lakes, the vast poetic wilderness of elder-flower and nightingales, musky dunghills and yawning crocodiles, lemon wine, demon-birds, death-trees and sunlit ice-bubble caves (I’m gazing now through the window of Coleridge’s notebook)?

And out there (another window, opposite side), some delightful selections from the Tuesday Poets as well. My gratitude to their muses. I encourage you to visit the site and see for yourself.

 

Read from the beginning of Res Publica | Listen to the audio version (read by Stuart Devenie) | Buy a signed copy of the book

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Wife in Bathroom Mirror, Part II — Stanzas 164 to 170

'She sighed. ‘Now please put back my toys. / You’re robbing them of all their joys.''

Res Publica, Book One, Canto the Third

164.

‘Guano. Phosphate. Fertilizer.
The island will be filled with it.
There’s millions in condensed bird-shit.’

My wife is smart. But I am wiser.
Not just her curiosity
– my words would spark ferocity
like blood around a shark. She queried:

‘I thought you said the island rose
quite recently?’

                             To which I parried:

‘A billion birds will there repose
in years to come! An albatross
is there right now – ’

                                     A platinum toss
of hair and wag of hanging crystal:

‘Just one?’ she prodded.
                                               I drew my pistol.

165.

And carried on: ‘The best investing,
you’ve always said – for I have heard
your cell-phone chats, each greedy word –
is safest with a long-term nesting.
Besides, my sweet, that’s just one scheme;
great cakes are often served with cream. . .’

‘A fitting image, indeed,’ she tittered.

‘Listen, wife – ’ I was equipped
this time to talk. The pistol glittered
in the bathroom’s light. I’d gripped
its handle, fingered its trigger. That land
is mine. I raised my fore-armed hand.

‘Now listen, wife – ’ and growing bolder,
I brushed the gun against her shoulder.

166.

‘You bastard!’ she gave the mirror a scolding.
‘You’ve stolen my darling gun!’

                                                           ’Twas true.
But ‘darling’ it was not. If you,
dear reader, could see the piece I was holding,
I’m sure you’d recoil without a doubt
at so much bulk and such a snout,
and all its gaudy silver plating.

‘Listen, wife – that recently risen stone
is mine. Let’s not waste time debating.
This country’s Economic Zone
can only claim a landmass spawned
within twelve miles. What’s found beyond
is anybody’s territory!
(Though Popes may tell a different story.)⁹¹

167.

In other words, I’m now much richer
than you, my dear! A wealth beyond
your measly shares and worthless bonds.
A kingdom come; and any pitch or
plea I make has one intent:
Easing the impoverishment
of my dear wife, a lovely, whoresome
wench’ – I whispered in her ear –
‘a hippie-chick, an anti-war-scum
(I know how much you love to hear
such dirt), a witch, a parasite,
a piece of white-trash cellulite,
a vamp, a tramp, a bird-brained bimbo . . . ’

I paused and waited, my fate in limbo.

168.

'...and some / handsome British chap...named Branson.'

Those mirror-eyes were cold as ever.
And straight at me aligned. No sigh.
No parted lips. No moan that I
could recognize. Some inner lever
which I had thought would switch had not.
And in that mirror I was caught,
a tall-guy, partly hunched and snarling;
gripping tight his wife’s blonde hair
and waiting – for what?

                                             ‘Arcady, darling,
there was a time, I must be fair,
when such foul words excited me.
And even now such flattery
might cause my knees to shiver
– if only you were not its giver.’

169.

Then from my bathrobe’s heavy pocket
I drew some handcuffs out. ‘And these?’
I said.

           She laughed. ‘We lost the keys
two years ago! We couldn’t unlock it,
remember?’

                                    Before I could discuss
the dangling double-annulus
and how it could still leave her senseless
if, say, its chain were choking her,
her repartee left me defenseless.

‘O why are you so immature!’
She sighed. ‘Now please put back my toys.
You’re robbing them of all their joys.
Somehow you make them look so wilted.’

And once again my hopes were jilted.

170.

I aimed the pistol, pulled the trigger.
A feeble buzz beside her head.

‘The batteries,’ she said, ‘are dead.
Like you, Arcady, they’ve lost their vigor;
and they, like you, can be replaced.’

And thus, dear reader, nonplussed, disgraced,
my simplest hopes, alas, frustrated,
I had no choice but to relent
and feel the droop of plans deflated.
Then one last gambling chip I spent,
and whimpered like a chastened pup:

‘Some wealthy partners are lined up.
American investors . . . and some
handsome British chap . . . named Branson.’⁹²

⁹¹ I believe this refers to how, in 1493, Pope Alexander VI, then the reigning pontiff, issued a document which Arvro Manhattan, in his book The Vatican Millions (Chick Publications) called ‘one of the most astounding papal writs of all times’. A Spaniard himself, the Pope basically granted all the lands ‘yet to be discovered’ to the King of Spain.
⁹² Sir Richard Branson (born July 18, 1950) is a famed British entrepreneur and billionaire, best known for his widely successful Virgin brand, a banner that encompasses a wide variety of business organizations, including an airline.

__________
Zireaux’s comments on these stanzas
There’s something terribly vulgar in the nature of entrepreneurship, nothing at all like the awkward inventor working away in a secret laboratory. We read about entrepreneurs when they’re youthful and exuberant. We read of the great inventors when they’re very old or dead. The two are as different as poetasters and poets. Our narrator Arcady, mind you, would consider himself neither a businessman nor an artist; but nothing will stop him from inventing his future.

I do hope you’re enjoying Res Publica, Book One. Be sure to also read the many talented poets this week on the Tuesday Poem blog.

 

Read from the beginning of Res Publica | Listen to the audio version (read by Stuart Devenie) | Buy a signed copy of the book

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Wife in Bathroom Mirror — Stanzas 156 to 163

'...these lines from which my song / is hanging could use your roulette-spin...'

Res Publica, Book One, Canto the Third

156.

My wife was back from Asian journeys
flushed with optimistic deals.
All Asia is hers she often feels,
and leaves the fine print to attorneys.
But more than what she does abroad,
she knows, back home, her friends are awed
each time she speaks the same exordium,
‘I just got back from overseas’,
then talks of Hong Kong’s best emporium
and how she dreams in Cantonese.
Her favorite joke: ‘If one’s rebirth
is based upon this life’s true worth,
I hope the deal which I contract is
EBITDA – that is, pre-taxes!’⁸⁷

157.

Now Autumn had come, that moody, moping
season; the drunk who party guests
abhor; the one the girls protest
‘is such a dick! And always groping!’
Perhaps his talent to offend
is what makes Autumn such a friend
to poets, playwrights, those who’d rather
not let scenes stay idle long,
or too much golden weather gather.
O Autumn – these lines from which my song
is hanging could use your roulette-spin
and cycle-wash, the rain and wind
which leaves the housewife aggravated;⁸⁸
and nihilists – like me – elated.

158.

For with your sore and cranky dimming
of light, one feels the urge to cause
some scene, to break some natural laws,
to kite-surf waves once meant for swimming,
to banish all that naked flesh
from sand and sea and start afresh;
to watch your feckless tree-conversions
– less Fall than Pall which half-descends
in weak crusade. Your many immersions
end with arbors unchanged, unborn-again.
And even if you order – ‘Disarm!’ –
There’s little effect; all threat, no harm.
The leaves which drop fall mostly after
wind-inspired fits of laughter.

159.

And something else tells how the air is:
For every Autumn settled here
has left another hemisphere.

My wife was due to fly to Paris.
And then, no doubt, New York as well.
Some inner clock would sound its bell,
a yearly clang of stern dispassion,
enough to pause financial work
and tell my wife she’s out of fashion.
Such style-alarms she’d never shirk.
Those tauto-triplets – Louis Vuitton –
are never closeted for long.
They leave to Paris with little to bring there;
then come back packed with heaps of Springwear.

The End of the Golden Weather, by Bruce Mason. '...Those who’d rather / not let... / ...too much golden weather gather.'

160.

Twice a year these short excursions
are written off as business trips.

‘Clothes are just like software,’ she quips.
‘You have to load the latest version.’

I found her inches from her twin,
each eye to eye (or chin-to-chin),
with ink-dipped wand on trembling lashes.
Amazing how their free hands seek
where tweezers lie or powder stash is,
or lubed glass jar, or tubed Clinique,⁸⁹
or toner to erase some flaw;
ignoring, each, the strap of bra
that’s fallen down, no more securing
those orbs I once found so alluring.

161.

Hold on! Can I speed past such vital
objects? Will I not here describe
those wonders, which – as beauty’s bribe –
bamboozled me of all my title?
I shan’t! I won’t! I’ve said above
that I, of bodily Arcanum, love
a woman’s breasts the most. But wonders
that my wife’s glands were, distinct
and full and not too far asunder,
with cookie-paps, less browned than pinked
and firmly formed as Tupperware,
I’ve always felt the store-bought pair
of breasts should be, from art, restricted
(or by apophasis depicted).

162.

‘I cannot stress enough – it’s urgent.
The jewel’s ours! If we just spend
some cash,’ I said, ‘and can defend
our land from government insurgents,
we’ll make eight figures easily.
And best of all, it’s all tax-free!’
My wife, you know, is a shrewd investor.
A loan’s her favorite charity.
To make ‘returns’ has always obsessed her.
And though I spoke in ‘our’ and ‘we’,
such neutral words I always knew
were less effective than a ‘you’.
(Why even her draft of our prenuptial
was less fair-minded, more cleanuptial!)

163.

‘There is no risk! The worst El Nino
could not spoil our R.O.I.;⁹⁰
and if it did, then on the sly,
we’d simply open a casino.
Just think – the fathers, mothers, kids
all wasting money making bids
on cards which are so rarely drawn – O!
I almost forgot. A shortage has caused
skyrocketing demands for guano – ’

And here those primping twins now paused
in perfect sync. The mirrored one
now looked at me:

                                  ‘I’m sorry, hun’
– while putting on a diamond earring –
‘were those your noises I was hearing?’

⁸⁷ EBITDA is an acronym for Earnings before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization. EBITDA is notoriously used as an accounting gimmick to dress up a company’s earnings.
⁸⁸ My New Zealand source informs me the metaphor in these lines refers to a sort of web-like, square-patterned clothes-line, held upright by a single pole in the middle. The contraption spins in New Zealand’s windy environment, and is thus known amongst locals as a ‘windy-dryer’.
⁸⁹ Clinique – a popular brand of cosmetics introduced in 1968, sold in 130 countries, owned by Estee Lauder Companies Inc.

__________
Zireaux’s comments on these stanzas
Too hard, these lines, on Auckland autumns? Less Fall than Pall? Really? Leaves that must be shaken from the trees in “wind-inspired fits of laughter”?

I must agree with Arcardy, I’m afraid, especially from my current vantage point. Such a contrast with Auckland’s spring, this season here — the earth like a rich champagne, bubbling up with bright Rosellas, yellow admirals, flitting browns, giant red ants. Speaking of the earth, for one of Australia’s best landscape novels (and simply a brilliant work of literature), I recommend Joan Lindsay’s Picnic at Hanging Rock — a book which seems to follow me wherever I travel on this magnificent continent.

I also recommend more Tuesday Poems at Tuesdaypoem.blogspot.com.

 

Read from the beginning of Res Publica | Listen to the audio version (read by Stuart Devenie) | Buy a signed copy of the book

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