from Cheltenham (2012-2019): Cheltenham Elegy #420

for N.

I.
The Junior Prom deposited me (and fifteen
others) on the floor of her basement. I could
barely see daylight at the time, and at three in
the morning I began to prowl. I was too scared
to turn on any lights. She emerged like a mermaid
from seaweed. I needed comfort, she enjoyed my
need. We had gone out— she was bitter. The whole
dialogue happened in shadows. No one was hooking
up in the other room, either. You spiteful little princess.

II.
Whether off the bathroom counter
or the back of your hand, darling,
your unusual vehemence that
winter night, cob-webbed by
half-real figures, was animated by an
unfair advantage, which stooges threw
at you to keep you loopy as you
died piece-meal. All I had
was incomprehensible fury and a
broken heart— when I hit the floor
at four, you were getting ready
to play fire-starter, opened
the little snifter, curled your finger
twice in the right direction; darkness—

Equations (2011-2023): Thesis: #24

for Mary Evelyn 

To dwell on that siren call: it isn’t really transcendental. It’s meant to lift you up, then plonk you back down again (wet or dry, as the case may be). It serves the siren, not you. Trish knows these rules very well, has studied them. Her approach to playing the role is methodical— you give them this much, and then draw back. Not everyone responds to Trish’s particular wavelength because it presupposes not just intelligence but artistry. You must be a figure worthy of representation for her to take you seriously. Conversations must shoot up around colors, forms, images. The drunken nights I spend at her studio (white and red wine) are an epiphany. I’ve never had my mind and body turned on at the same time. Trish knows this; she is going down the checklist. Her postures and gestures are bold and dramatic; when she takes the pins out of her bun and lets her long hair fall down her back, part of me falls, too. It’s winter; the studio (three of the four walls being mostly windows) is chilly. I’ve grown a slight moustache but, at twenty-five, still look boyish. Trish doesn’t take my songs or poems seriously; they are unproven, not high enough. My thoughts crave her approval as my body aches for her submission. In this way, we dance. Trish is shrewd; she knows that, with my intense urgency, she must give in (at least once) almost instantly. She likes taking the superior position and her long torso contrasts neatly with Lisa’s petite squatness. But (importantly) she hasn’t fallen. She’s played her part well; I’ve fallen alone.

Equations, and Mary Evelyn Harju

Now that the work of prose fiction entitled Equations is available in its entirety on PennSound, in two parts: The Thesis Episodes and The Jade Episodes: some elucidation might be helpful, if the book is to be widely heard and read. One obvious question worth answering: is the book literal, or meant to be taken literally, i.e. was it written out of genuine, authentic relationship experiences? Yes, most of it was. The dialectic structure of the book, and other things about it, necessitates its designation as prose fiction; yet many of the characters who enliven the book were real people in my life. The most literal character in the book, by a considerable margin, is Trish Webber. Those who know me, know that Trish Webber is closely modeled on painter Mary Evelyn Harju, who could also be called simply Mary Harju or Mary H. in the Aughts. Mary's presence as Trish in the book lays down a gauntlet of how many representational perspectives I can employ to attempt to portray a very complex reality: who we were, together as a couple, and who we were individually as well. If Trish Webber emerges as the star presence in Equations, it is because I really did spend the most time with her, and because she was the occasion of my most profound experience both of falling in love, and of staying in love. I loved her. That having been said, some of the perspectives which develop around Trish are negative ones, too. For a relationship as intense as ours was, and we were very intensely involved indeed, this would seem to be inevitable. It is also worth saying that discerning readers of Equations will notice this; Trish, Mary, winds up looming over the text as something or someone ineluctable at the center. But it may be new data that the standing at the center quality Trish has in Equations was something real, authentic in my life. When I've done Mary in poetry, as in Otoliths 69, the instinct to compress, cut to the core is given more leg room. In both prose fiction and dialectics, the expansiveness of the text creates an effect of circumlocution which is difficult to avoid. Yet fiction, when done with skill, can represent a wider reality than poetry as well. Equations is not meant to be one long paean to Mary, but the composition of the book, as though it were a painting, brings her to life at the center by surrounding her with energy similar to hers, but not the same. She stands with, and against, others in the book. And to be noted that the center placement for her in Equations is deliberate, from my end, and earned as well. 

from Cheltenham (2012): Cheltenham Elegy #261

for Chris DeLuca

Never one to cut corners about cutting
corners, you spun the Subaru into a rough
U-turn right in the middle of Old York Road
at midnight, scaring the shit out of this self-
declared “artist.” The issue, as ever, was
nothing particular to celebrate. We could
only connect nothing with nothing in our
private suburban waste land. Here’s where
the fun starts— I got out, motherfucker.
I made it. I say “I,” and it works. But Old
York Road at midnight is still what it is.
I still have to live there the same way you do.

LTDM (Letters to Dead Masters): #26

              Percy,

            The Grind has a strange policy with bums. For some reason, they are not only tolerated but encouraged to hang around outside. Today has been particularly gruesome— a white, middle -aged bum with shit-stained pants has been hounding girls for an hour. It’s useless to ask the DJs to flush these guys out— they’re too spineless. As the outside tables are not cordoned off, a bum like this can get right in anyone’s face or even sit down. Sure enough, the guy sits down at the next table. He moans and groans, calls the girls beautiful, scratches his ass, and generally ups the tension knob a few notches. It’s Labor Day, coincidentally, and semi-crowded (I was expecting desolation). I just ran into a friend of Bennie Holmes, one of the street poets. The conversation petered out after an awkward minute. What this guy can’t stand is that I’ve changed— I don’t give off cozy mediocrity vibes anymore. This guy resembles the landlord in Big Lebowski, but I don’t know if he does dance routines. Suddenly, here comes Dana, and I’ll end this off with ellipses until she leaves…that’s the longest conversation I’ve ever had with her. Now that we’re a semi-item, she appears to be opening up. Dana has a lot of pent-up rages, for the simple reason, I believe, that she never gets laid. She spent several weeks in New Hampshire this summer, farming, and she tells me all about the thrills and spills of the organic life. She sees herself eventually living on a farm, in some sort of communal context. Funny: I spent some communal time in New Hampshire, too, on a poetry farm, and, as I’m not ashamed to admit, on a proverbial sex farm, with Wendy Smith. Dana is so scared of such things that I might say something about my own life that there are surprisingly few pauses in her rambling monologue. I nod, laugh when I’m expected to laugh, express the requisite affection. But the conversation is tainted by the evident rider that I’m not allowed to speak. Dana reminds me of N, too: the absolute despotism of the orgasmic ecstasy of the mind-fuck.               

             It’s taken me, actually, thirty-four years to fully realize what a charnel ground the arts are. The charnel ground is established and held in place by millions of folks whose major talent is for self-deception— their guiding premise being that they can do this, where the arts are concerned. Layer after layer of self-deception develops, if these people stay in the arts over a long term. Because the success ratio in the arts is astronomically low, these “pseuds” contrive any number of reasons to place themselves right on the proverbial mountain. Dana is a perfect synecdoche— it’s useless to try and dissuade her from believing that her little pictures are as good as anyone else’s. And what density! All these levels and layers of self-deception are so tightly packed (perhaps because the self is packaged as a commodity) that to talk to these people is to spit into the wind. Being young is no guarantee of malleability— girls like Dana learn all sorts of self-preservation methods (whether it’s theory, mistrust of theory, ignorance or knowledge) that ensure maximum density by age twenty-five. The guy that was just here, Bennie’s friend, is a typical example— his platform is an exaggerated American egalitarianism, an ethos that dictates “nothing’s better than anything else;” which means, of course, that his own putrid pieces are safe, fine. It also means there’s no reason to respect me as his superior. No taste means no waste, as far as he’s concerned; if everyone’s equal, everyone can serve (and, if they’re unctuous enough, be served by) him. Some of his gossip has gotten back to me, too. 

          One of the hokey contrivances around modern poetry involves age; specifically, that poets under the age of forty cannot be taken particularly seriously. This is a gambit on the part of older, conventionally established (i.e. impotent) poets to protect their glass-housed positions. This guy, Benny’s friend, turned forty two years back. Since then, it’s been his delight to deign every move I make the foolish (albeit cutely foolish) misstep of a “younger poet.” If you spend enough years publishing garbage, if you’re still in the game at forty, you too can gloat and treasure easy superiority over anyone younger than you. Taste makes waste, except I’ve won enough leverage to cut him off if I want, and I do. Kill or be killed, schmuck, as Bill would say. The smarmy stance before the world of the book parasite. That the good guy has to win some of the time: why the rake and ho routine had to happen between Wendy and I. 

         The sex difference between Dana and I makes these issues trickier; genuine sexual tension makes it difficult to be disinterested, and vicious. Where there is an edge of wanting, razors become butter knives, especially with a man like myself, who aspires to kindness. But, from old writers right through to Dana, the angle of the would-be (or could-be or should-be) holds true. Do I desire vengeance? In this context, vengeance and truth are identical. Philly, this Philly really is such a putrid mess that a claim for vengeance (or truth) would be an overstatement— all I covet is a few moments rest— Larsen’s dope. Which was a hit down on the farm in New Hampshire, I might add.

     Yours, 

        The Eternal One

from Apparition Poems (2010): #1488

for Julia Brodsky

liquor store, linoleum
    floor, wine she chose
was always deep red,
    dark, bitter aftertaste,
unlike her bare torso,
which has in it
all that ever was
      of drunkenness—
to miss someone terribly,
to both still be in love, as
she severs things because
she thinks she must—
    exquisite torture, it’s
  a different bare torso,
(my own) that’s incarnadine—

LTDM (Letters to Dead Masters): #31

         John, 

       Being in this place on an almost daily basis, my moods come up and down with the music they play. Today seems to be 90s nostalgia day: we’re sitting through Bleach. Listening to Kurt’s voice, I travel inwardly to the place I inhabited when I first heard these songs. The teenage landscape: how much I wanted to be an artist, how many privileges I claimed for myself because I was already writing songs, and all the stuff that happened on the periphery of my consciousness (though perhaps at the forefront of everyone else’s): parties, driving around Cheltenham with friends, pot, girls. One thing I’ve lost is a sense of expectancy— as of today, I have nothing to look forward to. It’s not just that experience destroys innocence; the road of excess I’ve been joyriding down has created a space around me that cannot be filled. But I catch backwards glimpses sometimes, and music, more than anything else, opens up long-closed channels that allow me to re-receive impressions. Right around the time Kurt died, probably late spring ’94, I was hanging out with Chris and Fran at Fran’s house, high. It was trippy weed and, sitting on Fran’s back porch, I hallucinated that his backyard was an African jungle. I was self-conscious because I had to piss and thought I couldn’t find the bathroom. So, this being the 90s, I just walked into the jungle and pissed there. My last memory of that night is of banging out one of my songs on Fran’s piano, specifically for Chris to hear. I realized in the middle that I have a unique talent— though I often couldn’t find my feet when stoned, I could bash out my songs and get through them.                                                                                                        Funny: Chris DeLuca and Ted Gissman didn’t take to each other like I hoped they would. Chris took one look, as of fall ’91, at Ted’s homeboy posturing, and decided to fling some arrows in his direction. Ted became impassive, stone-like. And it went downhill from there. Chris wanted to see some whirling dervish showmanship from Ted, to prove that all that posturing wasn’t hot air, and Ted wanted respect for the loftier position he held at CHS. And other things he was holding. I stood in the middle, attempting to mediate, drained of machismo from long exposure to the CHS theater department and its Harvey Fierstein vibes. Ouch. The contemporary sting kicks in— here I am, at the Grind, 2010, having both gained and lost more than I ever thought I could. All because, bleached or not, when I say “art” I still mean it. Kurt, Fran, Chris and Ted are still with me somewhere. 

           There’s a man sitting in one of the corner seats who appears to do (outlandish as it seems) cartoons for the New Yorker. In the early aughts, I was quite smitten with the New Yorker, down to being a perpetual subscriber. It took me several years to realize how “culture-lite” it is. It doesn’t aid their lightweight image that the most likely place to find the new New Yorker is in a doctor’s or dentist’s waiting room. I loved Updike in those days, and I still like bits of the Rabbit books, but the poetry is so putrid I really only pick up the New Yorker for laughs. Why a New Yorker cartoonist would plant himself at the Grind in Philly is beyond me. Maybe he likes the European feel of the place— black coffered ceiling, semi-artsy photographs, hipster sheen. There he is, rubbing one off. Nicer than Bleecker, eh? 

             One trail I go down on days like this is opening my eyes to visuals, as ends in themselves. Sometimes I get a weird visionary sense just from looking at murals, row houses, cars, sunlight hitting certain kinds of bricks. For instance, the way the sun just now is striking the façade of Frank’s puts my head in a painterly space. I’ve always admired the expansiveness of certain painters’ lives— Picasso, Monet, Renoir. The real painters, it seems to me, have a way of taking it easy while maintaining intensity. There is a terrible narrowness to language in any one writer’s hands; images have a pliability that makes them seem to me, on some level, more blessed. Not that poor old Monet going blind isn’t tragic; but the length of his life, the broad vista of his painterly consciousness, is something that can be picked up, even if Frank’s is hardly a realm of pointillist precision and water lilies. Or maybe there is a hint of desperation in Philly these days, and I’m channeling it. 

       Yours, 

           Adam