The Advent of Lurko
So, Sharon is going to be around for a few days, meaning I'll be busy ferrying her around the country so that legions of school children can treat her to those gaping maws that I have come to love so much. To keep you all busy for awhile, I leave you with a bit of Poesie in my absence. First, a nugget from me own noodle, what I'm calling a sonnet, becuase, um, it has 14 lines.
a pair of socks
we, being the laziest of animals,
tend to launder only the top of the pile--
or maybe it's just me--I wear
the same clothes over and over again
though own far more. a black pair,
a pair of black Christmas socks
belong to my wife and I resent them.
we keep an old wicker basket by
the patio door full of lone socks,
mostly mine; now, having discovered
the other black sock, entirely mine.
meanwhile the army of cicadas beyond
the patio giggle in their way,
and I continue to lie awake.
Reading over it again, I realize that's a bit clunky at first, but it comes into its own, so I've left it as is. The next Poeme comes from my reminiscences of college as I listened to NPR over the Internets while washing dishes. It's got fifteen lines, so it's a bit much for a sonnet.
the other day or every T/R
from 11 am to 1 pm
I listened to Gwendolyn Brooks
read "Ode on a Nightingale" on 8-track
at the behest of Prof. Helmut Heir.
I could never tell - so deeply moved
was I - if my bowels cried out
for the banana in my bag
or for Ms. [r]ivers to chant shout
UZUUUUUUUUUURAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!
the other day I ate the banana,
an un-fucking-believably huge
Diet Coke, and a bag of chips
as I left my headphones in
from 11 am to 1 pm.
Lastly but certainlies not leastly, a Poemu not so much mine, though I am translating it, that gets to ride shotgun more often than you'd think. It's funny, to me at least, and hurts a little too much. Sato Mayumi from her latest collection of waka, Private:
the letter
"I'm writing to you
from Denpasar Airport"
I write at Mister Donuts
posted by Nicholas Theisen @ 8:15 AM
4 comments
4 Comments:
This reminds me very much of some poems I wrote while in germany: world-weary, martini-humor type stuff. I'm wondering whether your "army of cicadas" is literal or an allusion (to Hesiod, for one, as you no doubt know).
I am so tired of myself I could cry.
"I could never tell - so deeply moved
was I - if my bowels cried out
for the banana in my bag"
oh, dear nicholas, if i only had a quarter...
as for you, mikey, stand in line. we're all tired of me. i mean, you. (snicker snicker.)
kisses!
What's up, gimlet? That sounds pretty depressed even for you. To reword a patty-ism, "ah, the germans; ah, melancholy."
The allusion to Hesiod is entirely accidental, as it's been like years, man, since I read the Works and Days. Maybe there was something in the back of my mind, but the cicadas are there because 1) their presence this time of year is ubiquitous and because 2) they're FUCKING LOUD. So, in answer to your question, it's literal, but reading my cicadas against Hesiod's wanton women would not be entirely in appropriate.
As for you, Senor Baldone (that's pronounced bahl-doh-neh btw), it wasn't until a second reading that I discovered how dirty those lines were. I assure you my intentions were innocent.
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