=po041129

Poems, from 29 Nov '04

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APOLOGIES TO SHAHABUDIN:

Smiley the cook
or chef at best
don't like his job.
I think maybe he curses my food
but I buy and eat it
anyway
though I can always go to another place
2 hrs & 500 meters down
icy trails.

I say to myself
I am a steam locomotive
iron-clad.                             

                                          (Campra, 28 Nov '04)

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An old man dresses slowly
long before dawn.

There is a certain satisfaction
in 'getting one's trip together'
after I have to.

Senlin's necktie
was an apology.


           (Ref:  Conrad Aiken, The Morning Song of Senlin)

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She rests beside my bed this morning
cheering just by being there,
my imaginary buddy 
the Playmate of the month,
in her requisite body of Venus
and anxious smile of a child.       

The Matrons of Modi'in may say                (1)
I suppose -- 
No; indecency I daily see
in my bathroom mirror.


Notes:  "Matrons of Modi'in" -- Cf. Wallace Stevens, "O Thin Men
of Haddam" ("21 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird")
But then Cf. Rodin, the Burgers of Calais.

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apr."Do not seek to uncover the secret of another." (HIK)    (1)

Desperate for money
I can't quite afford
I think
he fights dirty
lifting my rock to write 
Why are you so ambivalent -- 
Well, one must carry on -- 
(Aziz said so too.)


Note:
(1)  I do not now find this quote from the index of hardcover
Collected Sayings; I am too layz to do an electronic search of the
CD.
Would you believe it -- I have learned to use a European kezboard.

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The Critic on his Economical Self-Catering Swiss Vacation:

I rise before dawn
brush my tooth
and thaw my underwear.
Then I open the refrigerator door
to keep the butter cool.
And then, having mopped my private living-room floor,
I skate to the fireplace
with my collected international subscripton 
to The New York Herald Tribune  
which stopped sending me
"All the News that's Fit to Print"
the day Bush won.

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Fragment:

who'd you'd never guess is an Oedipal specialist

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Campra, 29 Nov '04 -- 17 Kislev -- 17 Shawwal 
Quiet night, snow on the gournd.
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