Put Away the Speedboats, Stop the Locomotives and Chase the Monsters from Under the Bed

It’s raining again – the leaves are no longer intermittingly but consistently falling – waffling in the air – sticking to the wet ground. All the green is gone (or nearly gone) even the grass is beginning to turn brown. Already there are a few bare branches poking into the gray sky. And after each rain the little dog thinks that it must re-scent its landmarks – where does it keep all this pee? You can now put away the mower for the winter. The boats have already been put into storage.

We have this history we make: it is not the same / As money; it is not theirs as goods or change – Kenneth Patachen – Collected Poems, 1967 p7

It’s that O Shit!
Moment of realization
Of an impending catastrophe
Lying immobilized
Mind awake without

      Any body to command
Just waiting now for the
      Other shoe to drop
Monsters lurking
       Under the bed
Global warming descending
        From the ice shelves
It would be much better not
        To know
What you do not know
Is only an over active
        Imagination
Let us hope
If I could only
       Move my arms

The future is colonized by the present – Ulrich Beck – World at Risk, 2008 p212

Time for a Dress Rehearsal
Preprare
Preparing to
Preparadness is next
      To Godliness
The prepared shall
      Inherit the earth
Having prepared nothing
      To do but wait
Are you prepared
I think so

Spies aware of danger grasp for guns / not straws – Kenneth Patachen – Collected Poems, 1967 p25

And on the International Bridge

      Into Peking
Two soldiers with bayonets
Tips gleaming in the midday sun
High above their helmeted heads
      Halt! They yelled in unison
And what kind of tree
      Is this – They demanded
I looked where one of them
      Was pointing


I was unsure but ‘Yew’
       Came to mind
Life and death was also
       On my mind
I knew it was neither pine, nor
       Spruce nor a fir or even cedar
Yes, they agreed, it could be
Autumn is glorious
       Is it not – I agreed
Last year by this time
All the leaves had fallen
       I replied. We just
Arrived, one of them said
The cold winds are already
       Sweeping across
       The Manchurian plains
The other one said


The bridge formed a high arch
Impossible for automotive traffic
       Maybe one of their little tanks
       Could creep across it
They stood at parade rest
I was bored by military
       Discipline
They say the war in the Far
       East started here three three days
       After this

Ironically our continually perfected scientific-technological society has granted us the fatal insight that we do not know what we do not know – Ulrich Beck – World at Risk, 2008 p47

Someone has a plan
A man a plan a canal
God has a plan for you

Obama has a plan
       For this nation
Everyone has a plan
It is a plan – no Superman
Oh oh oh – Superman
Faster than a speeding bullet
More powerful than a locomotive

The point is not to be upset, to be able to confront the horrible equanimity. But this look that is not (mainly) compassionate is a special, modern ethical construction: not hard hearted, certainly not cynical, but simply (or falsely) naïve – Susan Sontag – On Photography, 1977 p41

39% of Americans think that the US government should “stay out” of Medicare

To take… specimen after specimen, seeking an ideally complete inventory, presupposes that society can be envisaged as a comprehensible totality…. In America every specimen becomes a relic – Susan Sontag – On Photography, 1977 p65

The odometer that takes a beating and keeps
      On ticking off the clicks
The hour hand that spins round and round

      The mulberry tree
Tear the pages out
Set the clocks back
Turn into butter


These young girls seem so clean
      And pristine. She says
That she’s getting married
I though she smelled of Prell
      And ivory soap


Yearning for the smell
      Of clabbered milk
As fast as one checks out
Another one checked in
Even this spiral of the Milky Way
     Is on a schedule

Guilt is there because, the body casts a shadow on the person’s inner freedom, his ‘real-self’ that – through the act of sex – is being forced into a standardized , mechanical, biological role – Becker – The Denial of Death, 1973 p42

Once we know what it is that we are looking for, it becomes much easier to find it. To maximize success it is best to stick with what is already known – of course circumstances do change – success in not assured. The “tried and true” is synonymous with yesterday’s solutions for tomorrow’s problems - or should that be – tomorrow’s solutions for yesterday’s problems. A slogan in time saves nine.

The grace and the strainless impermance of old poems spread out upon the wind like ghostly sails of so many long ago unaccounted for ships… Kenneth Patachen – Collected Poems, 1967 p451