David Bromige: A Selection
by Meredith Quartermain

David Bromige

from Desire: Selected Poems 1963-1987

The Romance of the Automobile

It’s dark. But there’s a moon. You’re lonely.

You’ve got me. You can’t stay where you are.

You don’t give me a thought, & climb inside,

turn me on, & off we go,

me all around you, moving you

while you sit still, up & down

the ground I keep you lifted from,

across the distance that your friends call you.

Though I can’t see

with these things much like eyes

I let you find the way.

Let you see what you might hit & miss.

Let you feel you’re in control.

Let you make me go so fast

you can’t control me quite as well,

or maybe not at all.

So I get you where you go.

And if it’s where you planned,

I’ve sheltered you from what came down,

proved useful, helped save a life maybe,

unless someone like you got in our way.

You’ve felt a strength, obeying me

while free to think of things along the way.

An irritation or anxiety,

if something’s wrong with me,

that is, if I need fixing.

And here we are. You can get out,

and stretch, as though to throw me off,

as though I were around you, yet

I’m evidently not. You’ve turned me off,

locked me up, pocketed the key

and left me in the dark.

You’ve got me where you want me.

As if I were a car.

4 Pieces for 4 Voices Interrupting 1 for None

When I take a walk with you

I take several hundred steps

then fall flat on my face.

This once I’ll tell you why.

I am trying to alarm you

because I want to harm you.

That clears up a part of it,

but part remains a mystery:

the way that I restrain myself

& how I know to come off it.

I am a student from Cambridge University,

you can tell a stranger

anything, that’s why I love to travel.

Anonymity. Actually

I was working on a farm

having flunked 10th grade. He was

the owner of a restaurant.

And I believed him.

Something representing an intent

occurring where he reads it with

what one can call his paranoia

because he takes it to be true

infuses all behavior

– behavior all infuses

because he takes it to be true

what one can call his paranoia

occurring where he reads it with

something representing an intent.

Try as you might to hide it,

yours is a suspicious nature.

So we really had to work to set you up.

Lucky in love, lucky at cards, lucky

us to have at our disposal

all the secret agencies

of your experience – lucky

you, to have enjoyed so much.

But this is it. The way you knew

that it’d end. We’re giving up.

The Cause

I am the cock

to make the sun rise in you.

What is this gang of physicists

you keep back of the set.

Who are these insurance agents

forecasting your weather.

I am a fairminded person,

albeit male, who tolerates them all.

Here is the inevitable postcard,

sunset over Popocatepetl.

Our frequencies

Always excepting time,

people the most commonly employed,

a little more than water,

a little more than words.

Man more than day

and less than words.

More days than work,

more work than things,

more things than help.

Years number men.

Men name home.

More names than homes,

more men than names,

more years than men.

More sound than thought,

more thought than world.

We see more than we can make,

make more than we can find,

find more than we can use,

use more than we can know.

I have one but what there can each like him see.

His Story

An old, old story,

to defy belief,

the darling child

spirited away,

and in his rightful place,

this changeling.

These toys were never his.

These rules were never his

to keep, or disobey.

These transparent people

never could be his,

even in this pallid light,

paling as they look at him.

They’d distract him with the stories:

how the son who slew his father

flourished in his wickedness,

how the son honoring his parents

flourished in his sickness.

How the honored father

went blind amid such glory.

How the blind man saw the light,

the pallid light, rejoicing.

The story of his murderer,

lacking means, enamored of his end.

Shadowed by the lovers,

enchanted with beginnings,

enchanted with the radiance

that blinds them to their ends.

Of the thoughtful man, who sees

all this, bemused

before beginning.

A story that won’t stop,

as he’s aware, a war

that’s undeclared, besieged by thought.

Of the soldier, enamored of his wounds.

Of the deserter, enchanted by his fate,

to find each man’s hand against him,

helping him. Of the teller of the tale,

too easy to believe him

enchanted with its outcome,

its familiar outcome.

Of the poet, enchanted, enamored & bemused

by others’ words, those toys,

& others’ tales, those rules

they mean to keep, & disobey.

The mocking, wistful poet.

But nothing can distract him.

The story of the fool

stumbling on the truth,

blinded by its radiance,

a light like that striking up off ice,

he warms to, but only till it’s clear.

So they tell him

the hardest to believe of all,

the child sought everywhere,

the enchanted foundling.

from Tight Corners

Contemplating what had to be taken apart & erected, he sensed the imminence of despair. If only he were to make the materials somehow bigger, — stretched so that fewer of them would suffice. But on that rack would their information lose integri-ty? On that rack he himself would confess to anything, just to be done with it. What was needed was to keep the materials intact, stretching, instead, the edifice, so that it would have to contain more space than he’d supposed. Again, though, time itself could be stretched, that is, its integrity could be preserved, for in stretching it he meant only that the project should be longer. It could not be cut off by death because with each act of dismantling & reconstruction the whole assumed, once more, a final shape. So, then — it looked like everything was fine after all which was a relief because it was getting very late & he was mainly concerned with the evasion of despair.

from Tight Corners

What worried him was, that he would not for long be able to put up with the ways life would be. Appealing as he found a number of people, not one but turned out discomfortingly weird in one way or another. What was it — as though some vast chord of madness had been struck on some unimaginable piano, & each was a wire, reverberating. The trouble was, that it was unimaginable. Not that he couldn’t see it with some clarity — a darkwood upright floating somewhere between Mars & Venus, with a man in tails playing it, his patent-leather pumps at its pedals. But enough of facts. Why give so much of our belief to that which can be proven to be true? It was not his faith that was in question. He addressed himself once more to his visitor, & agreed that there seemed little likelihood of physical death destroying the essential character of the deceased. Then he asked him if he liked piano music.

The Death of Poetry

The bad news came.

You got thinner with each day

and less substantial.

The end in sight,

painful breathing from the next room

came and went throughout the night,

and with morning

much to our surprise

you were standing in the doorway

wearing a headdress of duckfeathers

and an oversize pair of British Wellys.

You were off to compete in the triathlon.

We said, “That’s poetry for you!”

The End of the Stranger

I have just refused.

I have nothing to say.

I think that single instance would have satisfied me.

I couldn’t stomach this brutal certitude.

I’d pictured myself in freedom

standing behind a double rank of policemen.

I knew that night was coming.

I have never liked being taken by surprise.

I could hear my breathing.

I made the most of this idea.

I hadn’t done x, whereas I had done y or z.

I had to keep some order in my thoughts.

I might just as well have heard footsteps.

I was staring at the floor.

I must have had a longish sleep.

I was still right, I was always right.

I’d been waiting for this present moment.

I have never liked being taken by surprise.

I knew that the night was coming.

I couldn’t stomach this brutal certitude.

I had to keep some order in my thoughts.

I’d pictured myself in freedom

standing behind a double rank of policemen.

I was still right, I was always right.

I hadn’t done x, whereas I had done y or z.

I might just as well have heard footsteps.

I have just refused.

I think that single instance would have satisfied me.

I could hear my breathing.

I have nothing to say.

I must have had a longish sleep.

I’d been waiting for this present moment.

I was staring at the floor.

I made the most of this idea.

Typicality Enthralls with its Particular Failures

Typicality enthralls with its particular failures. “My husband doesn’t understand me at High and Academic — you’ll come, can’t you?” “Indefinitely.” Ours is a century of manic specifiers who mistrust anything, so it’s as though we knew one another already. Comparable plumbing. Incomparable plumbing. They hadn’t realized their experience was general, before she imitated their behavior in the bathroom mirror. “Why (ah, why) do women have such smooth thighs . . . ?” “Because men like them that way.” Into each life some rain must fall, but Teresa Brewer was merely singing what she’d been told to because I could be counted on to recognize it. Is that what makes the first person as singular as he is? The prepared person alone can be surprised into in-satiable desire, for the blueprint cuts no lumber. There is the effect of superimposing a repetitive design, such as a grid, on the same or different design to produce a pattern distinct from its com-ponents. Are the performances, they wanted to know, what was predicted from the record? In this society, we shift social conflict to psychic problems that can thus be charged to individuals at 50 bucks an hour as private matters. But isn’t a percentage of our wages intended to cover the case? It’s not only embarrassing to be like a dumb Swede in an Ingmar Bergman movie, it’s suicidal. Of course suicide can be the ethically correct choice. I think of him often.

Had he testified too personally (i.e., not personally enough) in his voluminous (i.e., not voluminous enough) ways, glued to the underside of all that he opposed? If mathematics is the analogy, what is this:

Aimed at defining

Simply transmit orders

World go round

Blow your wad

Late at night

On the level

Times the mass

The correct answer

Heard while reading.

For those who learned to drink in the 50’s, vibraphones will in-evitably bring on a slight stagger. Down the steep steps he slipped with many abrasions, only to find the Club Serendipitée, where he caught some GREAT sounds being improv’d by those cats. Then this chick, see . . . but music must not identify its methods, a part of subjective reason, with the subject-matter, which is ob-jective. There is nothing ambiguous about our double entendres. The poet, having no identity, is continually informing and filling some other body, and who isn’t a poet, if by that this case means scorned, spurned, feverish, headed for death, name writ on water, way with words, incapable of not noticing all this and more upon occasion? Only the self-important have indecipherable signatures; that’s what shy is. Sibyl, the psychological model (v. supra) for cutup, and not that this is; she clarifies universal tendency, stands for that freedom we seek from the rule of the monotone personality, and for the terror we fear from the trauma that fragments us. Viz: “I am my father on film desiring my body as a young man who must therefore be a young woman in love with my mother, herself admiring my young manhood in my father’s frame, plus the two girls in the upper berth across the aisle who had a little mirror and pencil and paper, plus the grandmother chaperone in the lower berth plus the lady feel sad oracle ex-perience received opinion hallmark conductor ejection.” Everyone should think like this. Everyone does. Does what. Nods.

I am not the person to whom these things were done but those things were done and their memory is in this person as imagina-tion. The crystal ball is one of us, you guess which. Who makes your decisions, if not for you?

Shrinking things making us feel bigger

The Cosmos, Psychiatry, Something

with sex written all under it. Etc., etc.

Comedian topples, finally, down manhole.

Audience swells with amusement, bursts

In two (applause). Two tiny tabs and he ex-

Claims at being everywhere almost at once.

Being. Everywhere. Fermis

Backfire: a Solitary Person

Standing for all of us

Between two double lines of cars,

(Standing for all of us also).

Time is attractive in a period of rapidly increasing wealth. We can hardly wait. You have to hear what we paid for this place and just guess what it’s worth today. To impress the crowd’s meanness upon himself, he envisaged the day when even the out-casts would be ready to advocate a well-ordered life, condemn libertinism, and reject everything except money. Easy for him to say. This first edition of Baudelaire set us back a pretty pen-ny. Why was an entire generation raised to despise money, and why did we have to be part of it? Its acquisition was supposed to breed callousness, but that was just our parents’ opinion, and they’re all dead now. But when money becomes the universal un-conscious (= ideology), we become, as always when what’s unconscious is in control, inefficient as a species, firing whistle-blowers to perpetuate error nobody much cares about before the banks begin to fail. Then all hell breaks loose. The cliches smash through the backdrop, clanking. One minute, Ordinary people were reading Sayonara in the ben-jo. The next, The Way of Zen had led its lotophagoi to call the cops out. Clinamen’s queer for exogamy, but right then a concluding ensemble, which serves as an epilogue, is frequently omitted.

The oppressive mis-use of the term unique, and let’s include all valorization of the individual, with its particular voice, perpetua-tion of anachronistic hierarchies, cultivation of foible, stems from a prior suspicion, too feared to be acknowledged, that, by the terms of our society, namely, monetary worth, all are, however inequitably disposed along its curve, interchangeable units, defined as capable of causing amounts of currency to adhere to themselves. Sexual activity has become one of the chief mask-ing routines ideologically calculated to buy off any such awareness. Concurrently, an alternative system continues to operate, threatening even as it is threatened by the first one spoken of here, whose units measure their abilities by different sets of criteria. But any one of us belongs to both systems. Is the pro-noun I a healing declaration of self or the last refuge of a scoun-drel? Write when you find out, or work.

from In the Uneven Steps of Hung Chow: First Flight

Of An Evening Chez Ho-San

“A curious fact concerning writing,” Hung-Chow was saying to us, “Is, that we have our experience, which may haunt us, and that we then propose to discover an underlying principle in it, which may lay the ghost.” As ever, I thrilled to hear our dear Master commence his discourse. Into the midst of the most deplorable and vacuous of times had come this dynamo, this man of high moral tone, to show those of us who still had the use of our wrists how to screw the hinges back onto the doors of civiliza-tion! “That is,” Hung-Chow went on, “The scatter of experience as it passes through us, headed as it were in the opposite direction from our forward-seeking selves, is not enough for us to feel we have lived full lives. If we cannot determine from pro-found contemplation of what has happened to us some simpler, less cluttered thing—which I have called a principle, for it is some sort of idea—then indeed our lives have been lived, as we say, in vain. Still, it is the experience itself that haunts us and appears to exact this something more from us, its agents, so that our very lives boil down until no-thing is left except the exemplary. So be it.”

“I recall once when a dear friend, Ah-Wei, had made her first TV show, that neither of us had a color TV set to watch it on. I thought of my friend Ho-San, and called him up. Ho-San and his wife, the lovely and gracious Hai-Tin, would not be home that evening, but Sure, we were welcome to come over and help ourselves to whatever we could find in the kitchen and to watch TV until the playing of ‘China the Incredible’ if we so desired.”

“It’s a large, well-appointed house, with a patio, covered with corrugated plastic nailed to stout wooden crossbeams, that gives onto a charming garden, entirely fenced-in and with barb-wire atop the fences to keep the TV and the stereo in the house where they belong. After Ah-Wei and I had snacked in the kitchen, seeing that the evening was a mild one, we decided to step into the garden to enjoy the air and the celestial display.”

“The door clicked behind us. I tried it. It was locked. I tried the other groundfloor doors and windows—locked, all locked. I attempted to climb over the fence so that I could go to my car with Ah-Wei (should she also prove capable of scaling the fence); not only could not get over it but I had, I realized, left my carkeys in the pocket of my Chinese smoking jacket which was, along with Ah-Wei’s outer upper oriental female garment, in the kitchen. The evening, rapidly deepening into night, was with equal rapidity growing colder.”

“Only one course remained. If, by standing on a chair I had found on the patio, I could pull myself up onto the first crossbeam, I might then crawl along this to the roof proper. The slope of that did not appear too steep, and I would then find myself at an upstairs window which looked to us to be slightly ajar—although of this, in the gathering night, we could not be sure.”

“But there was one obstacle: my terror of heights.”

“When I was sixteen, I fell from a card-table to a marble floor, damaging my coccyx. Ever since, I have allowed others to retrieve the parakeet from the chandelier.”

“Tonight, however, the alternative was to remain in the garden all night, in the increasing cold, while Ah-Wei, despite her protestations to the con-trary, if indeed she should utter such, might be secretly despising my cowardice.”

“In fact, at the very moment when I was thinking that thought, my eyes met hers. Before I knew it, I had hoisted myself up onto that crossbeam, and, by concentrating all my narrative powers on each inch of the trip, on hands and knees, moving each one gingerly forward (for the beam was no more than eight inches wide), until I got tired of this and completed the crossing with the mad dash of some crazed arboreal mammal, I reached the roof proper, up which I scrambled, heart beating wildly, to find the window was indeed slightly open: one push was enough to dislodge the catch; it swung open wide, I climbed inside, ran down the stairs and opened the kitchen door and held my dear friend Ah-Wei tight in my arms once more.”

“Later, we went upstairs in the usual way, turned on the TV, and lay back to watch Ah-Wei’s image go through its paces without noticeable error and with much verve and vivacity.”

“I believe I neglected to mention a significant de-tail,” our Master now said, one hand raised to his mouth in the gesture of apprehensiveness. “Or did I say that, while still in the kitchen and before we stepped into the garden, Ah-Wei and I had eaten a brownie laced with resin from the hemp-plant? It looked a lot like the little cakes I was eating when you all arrived this evening. And did I say that I couldn’t remember how long after eating this it was before we stepped outside, because we had smoked a ‘reefer’ also while at the kitchen table? So that my deliberations in the garden were loaded, so to speak, in the direction of what I call ‘Now-or--nevers-ville.’ What if I were to forget what I was doing, halfway across the roof’?”

“Friends,” Hung-Chow concluded solemnly, “The brownie of death is already in us. We ingest it at birth along with our mother’s milk, and very good it tastes, too. If we do not wish to spend our lives in the cold and the dark, there is something we must do. Something important. Something I could no more forget than I could my own name.” He looked at us for a little spell and then, indicating the disciple next to me, said sharply, “Are you paying attention?” “Oh yes, Hung-Chow,” the disciple replied. “Excellent,” Hung-Chow resumed. “If we do not wish to spend our lives in the cold and the dark, we must realize that the door where through we entered is barred against our return, that its circumambient fences are locked and barbed against us, and we must find the faith to hoist ourselves onto the narrow crossbeam that is The Way, taking care not to place the weight of our trust on the green uneven plastic of deception, until we can gain the steep roof of ambition about to be achieved, and can squeeze ourselves through the window of self-realization before the marijuana of oblivion overtakes us! Then and only then can we descend the stairs of complacency and undo the kitchen door of circumstance from the inside, then and only then may we honorably embrace the ves-sel of our hopes, then and only then may we sur-render to the rhetoric of a job well-done!”

After Hung-Chow had remained silent for several minutes, we understood that his teaching for this evening had come to an end, and, rising, we bowed and allowed our dear Master to usher us to the door which, as the first of our group to attempt to exit shortly discovered, led into a broom-closet. Hung-Chow apologized, uncharacteristically, for this well-nigh inexplicable mistake, and, as we left through the door he next led us to, which opened onto the familiar midnight street, I could hear his antique laughter growing fainter as we picked our separate ways down the uneven steps.

from The David Bromige Issue of The Difficulties

My Compensations (Glurk)

(Part Six of American Testament)

My own image seems so

clear and simple, as if

it would be impossible

to take me any

other way than what I

project. I know that

I am an honest

kind, warm-hearted

person, and my favorite

Other is the one

of iron nerve with

cold clear eyes.

Commit a crime,

and it seems as if

a coat of snow fell

on the ground. When

people don’t know

what is true

they have to

take all things

at face value.

Conflicts are

inevitable

however. My

main goal now

is to learn to

deal with those

conflicts in a rational

manner, and work them

out in a way

that’s agreeable

most importantly

to me, and to

a lesser degree,

agreeable to others.

I try and better

myself when possible

but sometimes lower

myself in doing so.

The wise man throws

himself on the side

of his assailants.

I hate to be

defended in

a newspaper. When I feel

the most unsure is when

I act the most

confident. The good are

befriended even

by weakness and

defect. While my neighbors

argue how I should spend

my life, I say to

hell with anyone

who doesn’t understand

musicians. The history

of persecution is

a history of endeavors

to twist a rope of

sand. I see myself

as being a very

insecure frightened

person who takes things

too seriously, but a lot

of people that I’ve met

think I’m just a very

quiet unsociable

type, who’d truck

and higgle

for a private

good, or by just

generally

putting his foot in

his mouth and

chewing. Either I

don’t see myself

as much, or people

set me higher than

I really am.

I figure

that most people in

today’s society

do this. Some of my friends

think I have

a good sense

of humor. I do

but it came from a

lot of work.

I seldom correct

any misconceptions which

probably leads to more, but

on the whole

I don’t

care. But the most

frightening thing about

being unsure of

who I really am

is that somebody

out there will

tell me. Things

refuse to be

mismanaged

long. We can’t stay

amid the ruins, neither

will we

rely on the new. I try

to face life

with an open

mind, so all I can hope

is that a person’s idea

of me is a good one.

Occasionally

I let my past

conditioning run

me into depression

or lack of confidence,

but I’ve been using

techniques that I’ve

learned to let

these just pass by.

What others’ ideas

of me are are

actually only my

idea and perception

of what they

are (the ideas).

The world

globes itself to

a drop of dew. I know

this must seem like

I’m avoiding the issue

which may be true

but all I can do is

discuss this as

fully as possible and

then I’ll say it:

“GLURK!” Of course

I’ll expect tumbling

release of tension.

I guess “keys”

and thinking you have them

is dangerous. The dice of

God are always loaded. So

if the girls don’t ask me

to dance, I feel ugly,

funky, smelly, common,

boring, but I don’t

worry too much. They also

will think differently

at a different time. Put

God in your debt, for

compound interest on

compound interest

is the rate and usage

of this exchequer. I am

more educated than many

of my peers and am able

to dominate my viewpoint

if I really want to. To

them I was Mr. Spock,

calm, cool, and collective.

I enjoy giving and receiving

the love passed in

the process of massage

and other arts of healing.

Then their ideas move

up and down with

me. People have played

a game back

and forth at

times of “Who

Am I,” answer

ask again, answer.

Those who do usually

end up lost and

crying at the end

of the road, unable to

plug anything

in. That obscene bird

is not there for

nothing. So I have

my mother to thank for

my anti-definition

feelings. As a child

she always told me that

I was a leader. Actually

I am a depressing person.

I love to just sit

in my rocking-chair,

play my guitar, write

poetry and love

songs and dream

of beautiful things.

A nice place

with plenty

of rocks to

throw. And

lots of tin cans to

aim at. Actually I am

a serious

realistic

person. I seldom

eat meat but

have no trouble

consuming a medium

size Cheez-It

package in one

sitting. This

contradiction reflects,

poorly perhaps, deeper

contradictions within.

Nothing can work

me damage except

myself. I think

too much for my

own good. I put

my thoughts in the young

women’s mouths. I am

thought of as being very

understanding and

giving. Actually their

ideas change

as they know

me better. I know

people must consider

me inconsistent at

best. I believe

these people

have defined

themselves

more clearly

than I. The martyr

cannot be dishonored.

To be different purposely

was frowned upon so

consequently I was

frowned upon. As

I left, the frown

left their faces

(I guess). Thus

do all things preach

the indifferency of

circumstances. What I

consider my essence is

very pure and filled

with love and faith.

from From the First Century (of Vulnerable Bundles)

The lost picture of thinking

The picture of lost-in-thought

What are you looking for

Some poems including history

Why are you looking for

There are cracks in thinking

Bits jut up of its smooth mosaic

Trying to sell you something

Those are safe pavements

Workingclass history

But all words are beautiful

Like the eye of the beholder

Like four bars without singing

Admit the sinking feeling

Live in the ecstasy

Remember why

It’s only an opinion

Lying fallow between furrows

The corporation yard is next

Never get lost for long

Often long to get lost

That brings us to our senses

The poet seeks the lost picture of thinking, he wants to show people how thinking actually occurs. He thinks this would be a good thing for people to see. And he also seeks to create another picture of lost-in-thought, of enrapture and preoccupation. Why? To help others avoid tripping up or slipping in? Certainly, he would not be averse to bringing some bracing disillusion to his readers. Much public thinking “these days” done to sell one (on) something. Like, that those “pavements” (of thought?) are safe – which they could never be! (Something about this entire process resembles a run of luck, a gamble, with this difference, he can never actually win or lose beyond a shadow of doubt). Charles Bernstein: “Poetry is a swoon/ with this difference:/ It brings us to our senses.”

There are opinions, and then there are corporations, who make their opinions stick. There are seizures which register as the truth, that do not communicate. Poetry? A telegram is more like legal tender. Grandson of ostlers scene-shifters & gamekeepers.

That’s not tragic it’s inconvenient

If it’s the mind we’re after

If we’re not echoing chamberpots

At the end of its tether one hopes

“Got a good cause for singin’ the blues”

Nothing you can really use

Nothing finite except a body to bury

So now the mode changes. The length, space & time-wise, makes a difference. After the disaster of #40 the poet thinks “To hell with it. I’m going to stop short if I want to.” This is a statement of esthetics...but then, so are all the others. “Nothing finite except” – ! That’s one big exception, and it makes us lonesome. “They get nothing else, in any case! To the barricades I don’t think! Call a spade a spade. And get Carol Lee Dodge back into print. Unless it makes for a dither, this doing two things at once. Apprehending & naming “things”. At least.

from Red Hats

Expunging all evidence of the passage of time to speak in palimpsestic sentences advising that the indecipherable be done at once they lost us — Marlene, how exotic thy accent to this lad from Cricklewood! “I’m from Shi-ka-eggo” and the wild American beauty of a form only in this generation blent from various European stocks themselves “set” classwise for cen-turies of a sudden released to new genetic and nurturing com-binations so that de temps en temps (ja visst!) the elements separate to allow one, two, three four different persons to be glimpsed through the veil of American identity — “your guess is as good as mine” — asymmetrical then, a cubist integrity of ever-threatening disintegration. Love’s blind, and you don’t know what you’re saying; no-one really knows us who does not love us. Love’s double-bind. Had we not read about it, we would not fall in love; had we not read La Rochefoucauld, we would not doubt it. We must all be talking about a different word, in the same tones of mingled earnestness, rhapsody and embarrassment. Speak for yourself, go on, make the rock walls of Lake Malar ring again with morning thunder as your teen-age erogenous zones tingle and ache with incompletion, the king nodding stiffly at the sight of all those goodies spread before him in the grass, a shot of you falling into the Baltic! That’s recognizably fine prose, hinting at more than it states, a clear window bored clean through your forehead disclosing yet another eye. Or doesn’t it rather face outward, so that the forms in the sudden squall blur to accommodate the total spec-trum of similar experiences?

The raw brick of the institution was swept with rain down the back of anybody’s neck. Godfrey, one of the stranger of the teenage recidivists in the oddball company of urban delinquents despatched to this remote rural battery of holding cells, once lights were out, would start to chant basso profundo “I see an EYE at the KEYhole.” “Is a PENny any GOOD, Mrs. Wood, to SMELL your HOLE, jam roll?” Geoff-the-Gannet would chime irrelevantly in (save that hole made a rime), supply-ing himself the response: “You filthy BEAST, it costs one-&-six at LEAST, to smell MY hole, jam-roll.” Pretty soon from each narrow cot voices swelled the ca-ca chorus: “I MET ‘er in a BOOZer dahn in DEAR old CAMden Town.” “RUB it up, SHOVE it up, balls & ALL; HIjigajig tres BONG.” “Did you EVer catch your BOLlocks in a RATtrap?” “I am TIRED of TEARS & LAUGHTer, & of MEN who SOW to REAP.” Pretty soon the counselors, each an ex-commando, fling wide the door and pummel their charges indiscrim- however it’s spelled. These lads were on the cutting edge of the decade: the H-Bomb for staff and guide, the Korean Conflict for a Pilgrim’s Progress, and the Beatles still ten years off. It had been hoped that farm labor would prove efficacious. Then there were the two bus-conductresses, equally unemancipated, one of whom’s bra even Dave, the lad from London whose posh school accent vanished within a week of his discovering the mistake in voluntarily en-tering this as-advertised “Educational Program For Young Would-Be Agriculturalists” (his companions were here because for them the alternative was 6 months to a year in Borstal), was permitted to gauge the texture and extent of. “Eer, wheer’sya mannahs? Tits fairst.” Classic beings fucking up, as Jim Brodey might have put it. “Children waking in the beds of the defeated/As the day breaks on the million/ Windows and the grimed sills/ Of a ruined ethic” could have been George Oppen’s take. These lads were merely spontaneous in placing the blame outside of themselves. When even the most hard-bitten blurted out something about the beauty of the landscape the farmer he was hired out to told him “Tha caan’t eat scenery.” There’ll always be an England, wherever humans mustn’t grumble. My parents by a prior contract my head had made in my head with my head, saw everything I did. That valley is a reservoir today.

The head of the cock lodges up against the neck of the womb. Sounds like a problem in Mechanics Illustrated. The turn of her neck where she sat at her mother’s piano, and must always sit, in the waxworks on the wharf. Even her scarf would be a more tangible token, if only it had ever belonged to her. He opens his wallet and produces some astonishing snapshots. He speaks, doing a passable imitation of voice-over. Two cystals danegeld from here ares. He was gait alight. Noting out of pace, scathing his sweetheart’s mane in the already defacted tunc. She drank heavely. Surfered with minstrel tramps and dislikes of her. Severing from loanliness, he laughed hurtidly, guggled with derise whiched to de side. Tow moanratic spanrods. This werter never gridated collage. Poetry mocks the spirit of sober objectivity. You can’t say that either. But we follow him completely into our own variations on the them, forced therefore to discover identity in a wide enough move-ment we could roll over and play Beethoven, background to the present search for the just word. But when we spoke to one another, he adds, we employed nearly all of these words, while the syntax stays indistinguishable, save for the reduction in the number of dependent clauses and the favoring of nouns over verbs, as if that meant nothing.

Remainders are an interesting concept, and were. Given 8 and 67, one can at least retain the 8. Among the Yoruba, clusters of 4 are the rule, but this is in English, and when I entered University I had a parttime job cleaning out the temporary huts (still, on my last visit, standing) one evening a week, one of which was used by the English Department to store its old exams. These I went through, until I found an A paper: “Fielding sets up his easel in 18th century England and daubs upon his canvas in bright colors and bold strokes the spirit of his day.” Hmm, I thought to myself, So that’s how it’s done.

So, Bob, I don’t know when I write society do I mean only what stopped us or also what prompted us and if the latter, the sense of the term at all, since it must mean the whole ball o’ wax — “tree,” “cliff,” “rock,” “water,” “ball,” “wax” pasted across what we surrender on a “mossy bank” of. It’s political, I think, each historical moment calling for an emphasis appropriate to the balancing of its inertia, and poets have this as our charge, “I see always,” writes Duncan, “the underside turning,” and in this nation today the unconscious content makes Forever Amber read like Henry James or isn’t that the conscious con-tent, so that we speak so to speak to hear society shriek intel-lection. Or go on having an accident which our reflection assures us will prove exemplary as well as entertaining. (That or doesn’t indicate equation but choice). Is authenticity a Platonic category, resisting Heidegger’s attempt to annex it as a Pro-tectorate? I would agree that what’s right in front of me is the only place to be, watching the words appear that say as much. The rest is rent. Wilderness was an 18th Century pas-sion (rimes with fashion), still is. Of course job security, achieved, if such were ever possible, and I include being inde-pendently wealthy (of what, citoyens?), requires of the viewer less courage, but this will be lost on the outer circle of readers. As for the rest, from the viewpoint of autobiography (and not only mine), during the late 60’s, there were many more young women than young men, and that is what is commonly meant by irresistible. If you remember, there’s simply a lot more past than present.

I hate doors whether on reed huts or rat sheds.

Dr. Haste, rust head, had us tread his shattered

star hued dear tush for some hot reads.

I hear dots whether in rat sheds or road huts.

Ears thud, as tears rid her staid head ruts.

I stare ashead, read history, dash rites, date hoors.

Ear dust from the sod heater in the reed hut.

I dare this, Dr. Haste, rites dash his tread.

The rider sat astride a shared T-bar & ate shards.

I shed rats, dust huts, hurt ears, hustle history,

her tads.

What’s a hare stud? That dates her. Had rest, shared tea.

I tread his history whose rider sat so as to heed ruts

amid rash tides from tear ducts.

He shat red, stewed hard, seared hot, heard her dear

tears, tired has-beens, dashed, rare hidden treat.

I dust doors star hued of head ruts studded with

strident dates.

This dare — hot reads — as ears thud & dots hear,

heads stare & sitters ride, tries to trash rut heads.

I thrash head rust, steer by the shards, heed ears:

Dats her! Drethas! Rahdets! Red hats!

Doors hear doors read roods raid rods stare dots down shut

history’s red ruts hear dust red stud for us to do as

best to tread hot darts whose hues heat heads ear thuds

hot reads doors hate.

Shattered, threads redo deserted sated shuddered states.

The Harbor-Master of Hong Kong

The patient experiences his powerlessness vis-a-vis the

objectivity of the illness

only because he is a subject condemned to passivity

In classical esthetics, crisis signifies

the turning point in a fateful process

not external to the identities caught up in it

Crises arise when the structure of a social system

allows fewer possibilities for problem solving than are necessary

to the continued existence of the system

Crisis states assume the form of

a disintegration of social institutions

issue from unresolved steering problems

Identity crises are connected with such

The market secures the power, sanctioned in civil law

to appropriate surplus value for private use

Communication between participants is

systematically distorted or blocked

on pain of ruin

I thought there was a Harbor-master of Hong Kong because during my student
days I used to hang out with a couple, and the wife had an ex-boyfriend who would visit her once a month when he went on a post-payday bender. He would spend the night drinking and making long-distance phone calls—I was present once when he put me on to an intern at Guy’s Hospital: this chap had been interrupted at his teatime, while dawn was breaking in Vancouver. (Don’t be impatient, this is a narrative of capitalism.) I had nothing to say to the good doctor and likewise
at his end, but we were polite and amused with one another. Another story about this phone-call--maker, which was strictly hearsay to me, had him going through much trouble to reach the Harbor-master at Hong Kong. And when he did, he bugled “Clear those junks outa the way, we’re coming thru!” (It’s a narrative of imperialism, too.)

III

“We will have to keep saying that foul is fair and fair is foul for a little while longer,” said Keynes sometime in the 1930s.

The one ethic left to us is the ethic of pity, Oppen remarks in a letter. Which must involve us in identification and empathy, which must tax us in guilt and second-hand suffering, which we will deny if we can, if we can be helped, as these years we are helped on all sides, to ask What’s in it for us? At the same time (it’s always the same time), not to ask that question is to be led to the slaughter like lambs. Instead of whatever it is we are.

“The economy will show zero growth this year, and there is a serious risk of a fall in output,” according to today’s Sunday Times (6/28/92)—years now since the collapse of communism, the tri-umph of capitalism. How come?

“Top civil servants, judges and military men [sic] stand to receive huge pay rises. . . .These groups have seen their salaries soar over the past year, despite the recession [sic].”

VII

“Lord Donoughue of Ashton, the Labour peer, received a £500,000 payment from Robert Maxwell when he joined the two investment companies that later helped plunder £450 million from the Maxwell group pension funds.”

VIII

In the May 22 issue of the TLS, Irving Kristol, in an article titled “America’s Mysterious Malaise,” wonders why Americans are losing faith in their system, which is experiencing nothing but a mild, “cyclical” recession. The article which runs a full four col-umns, or one entire page (broken only by the pic, which, by happy error, is of Louis Armstrong naked with an FDR-type cigarette-holder in his pearly teeth), pretends to examine the grounds for our disaffection, but never once mentions the Savings-&-Loan boon-doggle, which has made off with a trillion of our dollars (Reagan, signing the deregulation act: “Gentlemen, I think I can say we hit the jackpot!”).

“The original storyline was beguilingly simple. The Brits wanted a new agreement and the Chinese would oblige. . . .The British problem revolved around [their] fixation for legal niceties. It ap-peared that a parliamentary draftsman had misplaced the commas in a Victorian Order in Council giving the governor power to administer the colony’s leased lands from China until 1997. . . .To bluff it out was apparently an option. . .because communist China had never recognized the original loss of Hong Kong island or the subsequent lease of its New Territories. But it was better to get the legalities right and Deng Xiaoping, pre-Tiananmen massacre, was [the] man. They could fly their flag from the Peak if they wanted, station a few troops maybe. What mattered was that Hong Kong could carry on as usual. . . .It made sense of a sort. After all, old boy, the commies don’t want to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs in foreign earnings for them, do they? As for the locals,. . .who is going to ask them?

“What does Britain do . . . if China reneges? Nobody knows. . . .The omens are not good.” [Michael] Jones, The Sunday Times, 7/12/92]

Amid scenes of sartorial and gustatory splendor, Chris Patten was inaugurated as Hong Kong’s new governor. Money was on parade and money was talking. A woman, shy and alone, was washing herself under a tap, but not for long; she was soon snapped up.

__________________________________________________

Language in part I from Jurgen Habermas, Legitimization Crisis.

Lines

aporia will be defined

don't know where to start

keep it to yourself

write it down

life is brief

it says here

ontological insecurity

many of us don't know the meaning

of ontological insecurity

certain of himself

in that respect not to be trusted

infatuation

break break break

on thy cold gray stones o shore

weird and repulsive at first

later, reality

ephemeral

hang on to that

unconscious

we have only the present moment

to be unconscious in

is that the baby crying

non sequitur

i haven't got there yet

parricide

commonly botched

quaaludes and mythopoeia

i wish to obtain some for a friend

i see little of when on them

there is a blindspot between the rear and the rear-side windows

good place to sink a metal basketball post

with nothingness rattling the door

i draw a series of perfect blanks

i think that's silly

you have to be somewhere

kiss me quick

too late

club universe

before universe club you

i am here to find out who i am

and how

remarkably symmetrical

please take a number and be sated

yes i do resent it

when you use that word

no bodies hanging from the lampposts

we must be in the wrong neighborhood

the heroic personified

at five he had a five o'clock shadow

something of the misanthrope

thinks too well of people

to be human is to be a conversation

i'm doin okay

unemployed and feel useless

but helping keep wages down

language being only social

banks with the most branches are shadiest

lines of bitterness about her mouth

demanding a poetry of the emotions

this model is entirely predictable

this is no model

i am having the dream

that is impossible to interpret

my forehead's wrinkled my eyes all squinted up

poetry is supposed to supply us with a picture

not every trembling hand can make us squeak

my god wallace your breasts are like mice

leftwing movements

handy when there's nothing left to say

you're so alienated you don't even know it

of course i took it as a compliment

save time

kill it

division of labor

i write it

i admire it

a poem should not mean but be

whereas the opposite is true

from a Slug Press Broadside

The grass has grown

The grass has grown

over the old scythe

The cork in the wine

no-one would drink has crumbled

Closer to the graves

the paths grow clearer

Come out of hiding, despair

you're even shyer than joy

Acknowledgements

The Golden Handcuffs Review thanks David Bromige for permission to reprint these poems from the following texts: Desire: Selected Poems 1963-1987 (Black Sparrow); In The Uneven Steps of Hung Chow: First Flight (Little Dinosaur); The David Bromige Issue of The Difficulties; From the First Century (of Vulnerable Bundles) (Potes & Poets); Red Hats (Tonsure); The Harbormaster of Hong Kong (Sun & Moon); and the Slug Press broadside “The grass has grown.”