Oleander and Conundrum

I wrote these as a warm-up exercise for my students while we rush quickly through classical Chinese poetry. The theme seems clear to me; I will see if it is as clear to them.

Oleander

Oleanders bloom always

In the easy arms of sun-warmed brick;

They flourish when cut back and bound,

But grow rambunctious and unkempt

If spared the shears and twine.

They are unable to seek their own beauty,

But instead must find it in the gardener

Who knows just enough to tell it how to grow,

But not enough to let it grow. 

Conundrum

You wish to know

How I will judge you,

For your lives are full of others’ judgment.

You wish to know what marks I will make;

My marks give your work its only meaning.

If I tell you I will not judge you,

Or will judge you all the same,

Your work will be slight and meaningless.

If I tell you I will judge you carefully,

Your work will be tremulous and joyless.

You find it a burden to work for work’s sake:

For bright discovery,

For fearlessness,

For happiness. 

Thom Yorke

I can see a sun-slatted couch afternoon curled in quiet thinking of nothing but thinking
Metacognitive musery masquerading as constructivist clarity
Timp tump jangle high soft croon
Takes me down from judgement calls to soft wanderings
From room to womb
Aural slow down go downstairs
Big couch and high ceiling diffused with
Swirling sound and soft sun filtered
Orange peel plaster paint
Patterned like cerebra but wiped empty:
Erased

Fifteen Years From Box to Box

When I was just past the age of stumbling my forehead into doorknobs,
I went to an aunt's house whose bitch had given birth to puppies,
Who now squirmed and tumbled over each other,
In a box lined with an old blanket that smelled of dust and attic cardboard.

How unlike us, unaware of where they will be in fifteen years,
Old and fraying,
Like the blanket in their ersatz womb,
Or the auntie in her floral-papered room,
Busy with that moment and an overeager nephew,
Close by the box of bundling life,
Unaware of where he will be in fifteen years.

Hero of Humanity

Yesterday I signed up to be a hero. Not just any hero, a Hero of Humanity. That's pretty heady stuff, I can tell you. The stickynote adverts have been up all over town, fluttering for a day then disintegrating, then reappearing as the endless pile of government subscription money reloads them back to crisp yellowness once again. No good citizen can pass an upright structure without hearing the stickynote whisper and spotting the message: A Hero is Loved. A Hero of Humanity Is Loved by All! Some stickynotchers got in and added some pretty graphic images to a whole slew down at CenterRail. Those disappeared before their allotted renewal time.

In any case, I'm off to Lucy-knows-where in a few weeks. All I need to do is lay low until I can slip into the sanctuary of the processing station and I'm home free.

"Are we tracking?"
"Yep, we got him. What next?"
"Run a last check, just to make sure"
"Running . . . OK, it looks like he's still . . . hold it, nope, he's been vacated."
"What!? He can't be cleared, he's wanted on multiple charges!"
Yeah, but he hasn’t killed anyone, counterfeited any polymers, or stirred up any dissidents. Looks like a standard petty repeat offender and now he's got himself signed on as a Hero of Humanity."
"You have got to be shitting me, I thought they weren't letting any Confirmed through the gate."
"We could still get him, I mean, we have him tracked solid, he doesn't know we're on him, and he has a clear and open warrant. The only thing stopping us is a little note from the Sup: "Vacated for Transshipment."

You know, I might just be able to slip through and get out on that Silver Bullet. I'm a pretty good dancer and the boys at Oversight are loaded with work. I think I'll try after a couple of shots at Bern's. And there it is now, just around the corner and across the wire from Trans Port A2; the Carr Strip to the rest of us.
"Come on Eddie, I want some sweet surrender. My account is fresh full, really."
"Sure boyo, I don't think you got the grey matter to skim any binaries and you sure as hell are too lazy to . . ."
"I'm a genuine Hero Eddie, so serve it up. And you can tittylick the boyo now, as a I said, you're talking to a Hero."
"Lemme see"
"Well, Juicy-fucking-Lucy gentlemen, boyo here's a real Hero! And he's buying the bar!"
"HEY!"

"I still got him, he's Eddie's place across from the processing station."
"You know that place?"
"Yeah, it's not bad except when it gets late and the freaks come out."
"OK, let's pull up here, the window's painted over on that side."

"How much they payin' Heroes these days, boyo?"
"More than you'll see from wiping grime in this dive for the rest of your life, Eddie."
"Maybe, but I bet I live longer than you, even with my cheap plastic lining. There's some harsh shit up there Hero boy; harsh shit that will fucking eat you from the inside out, asshole to earhole."
"Yeah, but they got all sorts of new tech up there now. The bright-eyed Primers got chewed up real bad but it's all tight out there now. I heard its 60 squares per person and five hour work day in a 'fully climate controlled environment."
"Sure boyo, whatever the toon chick sold you. You'll be sleepin' in a 60 square meter bunk tier with 12 hour days on rock spinnin' so fast its homestar's gonna look like a fucking strobe light at a tittybar."
"Speaking of which . . ."

Holloway

Holloway slung low and greasy under the pisswall drain. A deadman zipped down overhead. Holloway froze and waited, welcoming the warm rain and drinking his anonymity down there in the dark. Holloway let the deadman go; his quarry lay further down the Pipe, down nameless tunnels and through lost spaces. Squeezing, Holloway pinched himself between the drop wall and the drainslot and entered a wide passage that slid down into reality.

Old Gathers Night

Old gathers night,
Holds it like a lover,
Alone, finding grim delight in sighing silence,
The certain intimacy of a dawnless dark.

A Character Study in Vignette Form

I make arrangements with the stones - chunks of concrete and gravel and bits of crumbling asphalt. I find good pieces everywhere. I have a tip for you: you can never tell where you might find just the right piece of concrete with just the right mix and pattern of gravel. You would think the big piles of demolition rubble would be the best places to look, but you would be wrong. Those are full of big slabs on top, each strung with rusted rebar pretending to protect, but actually crushing, the really good and unique bits of rock beneath their unrelenting, but unstable carapace. Stay away from them. Instead, search the emptiness between the mounds. Look down and closely in those places the little desert rats rush across only at night (I've seen them!) in a hurry to get from one seedy bush to another. There you will find those lonely and beautiful gems: chunks of concrete just the right size for your arrangement.

I've lived across from the apartment building for several months now, longer than I've lived anywhere else. Nobody bothers me here because it's far from anything except twisty strands of scowling suburban boxes for the storing of one, or more than one, family. These families don't know me, they don't know each other, they don't leave food out: even leftover food. I have to travel pretty far everyday down to the back of a big strip mall to get what I need: water, food, a newspaper, and something interesting to think about. I use this stuff to live and to create my arrangement, which is more important than living.

The apartment across the street from my lean-to cave on the empty lot stores many people. Some are families, but a lot of the mini-boxes store only one person. I see them come and go in patterns and see their feet and cars etch invisible channels in the asphalt (the black crumbles make stark counterpoints to my concrete gems). I like one of them, one of the stored people, that is. I don't whether it is a man or woman but I don't think it is a boy or a girl; it wouldn't be living alone if it was so young. I like this one because it doesn't always have the same pattern. It goes from its box in the morning, but never at the same time and sometimes I never see it go out. Sometimes I even think it sees me.

(Although that is probably not true since I am pretty sure I am transparent, or at least translucent. I have lived in many places where people almost trip over me all day long. Sometimes they step over me but that is because I take care to leave my clothes spread out a little so they will at least see a bit or maybe even a pile of fabric.)

I will make part of my arrangement about this person. But what should I use? Should I use concrete sparingly or add more natural rock? Should I try to increase the ratio between asphalt and concrete and natural stone (this will be harder because it's difficult to find aesthetic pieces of asphalt since the dgesof the road are too perfectly stitched with their gutters)?