A New Cast of Characters

I've decided to start reading one non-poetry book and one poetry book per week. So far, with starting a new job, I've only really gotten through the one poetry book. It was Walking the Black Cat by Charles Simic. I liked it but didn't love it, although his poems are about eerie and strange characters and wandering the streets and insomnia, which are all pretty interesting.

I guess they're also themes I know a lot about, in some way or another. I'm in a place that's relatively new to me (I've experienced the college side of where I live, not so much the town side) and now that I'm working in a local business and heading downtown everyday, I start to recognize the same strange cast of characters. People missing teeth, people who talk loudly about their sex lives, people who sit stone-faced on benches with only their eyes moving on the other passerbys-- people that I might have known for years had a grown up here; people that might not be so intriguing if I was from the area. Some of them talk to me about past jobs or overdoses or their various ailments while I work, and they're just these adult wanderers heading through a little city, and they're young in their unsettledness and old in their age all at the same time. And they're fascinating.

There is something about the odd cast of characters that come with every town, and I feel like that's what Simic captures in Black Cat. It's like a journey through a strange place, and I'm beginning my journey in a strange place, wandering through the streets to and from work and the grocery store, as one of the new girls in the town's ever-developing story.

Dark Corners

By Charles Simic

So, how'd you find me?

Ordinarily, I act deaf and dumb, but with you

It's different. Darting in and out

Of doorways, prowling after me

Like a black cat.

Just look at the suckers, I kept

Shouting at the world. It was no use.

They just stepped over me holding on to their hats,

Or lifting their skirts a little

On the way to hell.

He must be crazy, sprawled there

On the sidewalk, his fly unzipped.

His eyes closing. Only you came back

To see how I'm doing,

Only you peeked into every dark corner.

I'm a bird fluttering in flight.

Find me a nice, large cage with the door open.

Back me out of here with your kisses.

My shoes and laces.

My pants need your fingers to hold them up.

"Human House" by Ryuichi Tamura

I've decided to post another poem I like. I read this one a few years ago, and I've quoted it again and again for various things. It's by a Japanese poet Ryuichi Tamura and this is a translation. There's another poem by Ryuichi Tamura that I really like, but that'll be for another day.

Human House

I guess I'll be back late
I said and left the house
my house is made of words
an iceberg floats in my old wardrobe
unseen horizons wait in my bathroom
from my telephone: time, a whole desert
on the table: bread, salt, water
a woman lives in the water
hyacinths bloom from her eyeballs
of course she is metaphor herself
she changes the way words do
she's as fre-form as a cat
I can't come near her name

I guess I'll be back late
no, no business meeting
not even a reunion
I ride ice trains
walk fluorescent underground arcades
cut across a shadowed square
ride in a mollusk elevator
violet tongues and gray lips in the trains
rainbow throats and green lungs underground
in the square, bubble language
foaming bubble information, informational information adjectives, all the hollow adjectives
adverbs, paltry begging adverbs
and nouns, crushing, suffocating nouns
all I want is a verb
but i can't find one anywhere
I'm through with a society
built only of the past and future
I want the present tense

Because you open a door
doesn't mean there has to be a room
because there are windows
doesn't mean there's an interior
doesn't mean there's a space
where humans can live and die-
so far I've opened and shut
countless doors, going out each one
so I could come in through another
telling myself each time
what a wonderful new world lies just beyond
what do I hear? from the paradise on the other side
dripping water
wingbeats
waves thudding on rocks
sounds of humans and beasts breathing
the smell of blood

Blood
it's been a while
I'd almost forgotten what it smells like
silence gathers around a scream
on the tip of a needle
as he walks slowly toward me
the surgeon puts on his rubber gloves
I close my eyes, open them again
things falling through my eyes
both arms spread like wings
hair streaming out full length
things descending momentary gaps of light
connecting darkness and darkness

I rise slowly from a table in a bar
not pulled by a political slogan or religious belief
it's hard enough trying to find my eyes
to see the demolition of the human house
the dismemberment of my language

My house, of course, isn't made of your words
my house is built of my words

"How to Like It" by Stephen Dobyns

It's a Sunday and I haven't really done much today except watch a movie for class and debate finishing a paper. I was just going to not post today, but then I decided that I'd post one of my favorite poems. I always thought that if I had a miscellaneous blog I would post Stephen Dobyn's "How to Like It."

A year and a half ago, I did a week long master class with poet Stephen Dunn and essayist Barbara Hurd. It was a pretty great experience and on the first day of class with Stephen Dunn, he read us "How to Like It." Maybe it stuck with me because it was Fall. Maybe Stephen Dunn has a really good voice for reading poetry. Maybe I loved it because it was quirky. But maybe it just struck me because it was good.

So, even though it's not Autumn, here's the poem:

How to Like It

by Stephen Dunn

These are the first days of fall. The wind
at evening smells of roads still to be traveled,
while the sound of leaves blowing across the lawns
is like an unsettled feeling in the blood,
the desire to get in a car and just keep driving.
A man and a dog descend their front steps.
The dog says, Let's go downtown and get crazy drunk.
Let's tip over all the trash cans we can find.
This is how dogs deal with the prospect of change.
But in his sense of the season, the man is struck
by the oppressiveness of his past, how his memories
which were shifting and fluid have grown more solid
until it seems he can see remembered faces
caught up among the dark places in the trees.
The dog says, Let's pick up some girls and just
rip off their clothes. Let's dig holes everywhere.
Above his house, the man notices wisps of cloud
crossing the face of the moon. Like in a movie,
he says to himself, a movie about a person
leaving on a journey. He looks down the street
to the hills outside of town and finds the cut
where the road heads north. He thinks of driving
on that road and the dusty smell of the car
heater, which hasn't been used since last winter.
The dog says, Let's go down to the diner and sniff
people's legs. Let's stuff ourselves on burgers.
In the man's mind, the road is empty and dark.
Pine trees press down to the edge of the shoulder,
where the eyes of animals, fixed in his headlights,
shine like small cautions against the night.
Sometimes a passing truck makes his whole car shake.
The dog says, Let's go to sleep. Let's lie down
by the fire and put our tails over our noses.
But the man wants to drive all night, crossing
one state line after another, and never stop
until the sun creeps into his rearview mirror.
Then he'll pull over and rest awhile before
starting again, and at dusk he'll crest a hill
and there, filling a valley, will be the lights
of a city entirely new to him.
But the dog says, Let's just go back inside.
Let's not do anything tonight. So they
walk back up the sidewalk to the front steps.
How is it possible to want so many things
and still want nothing? The man wants to sleep
and wants to hit his head again and again
against a wall. Why is it all so difficult?
But the dog says, Let's go make a sandwich.
Let's make the tallest sandwich anyone's ever seen.
And that's what they do and that's where the man's
wife finds him, staring into the refrigerator
as if into the place where the answers are kept—
the ones telling why you get up in the morning
and how it is possible to sleep at night,
answers to what comes next and how to like it.

"How to Like It" was published in Issue 26 of the Cortland Review.