Cruel and Buoyant

It's that time again. Call it the vertical rise of Easter or the horizontal trek out of bondage called Passover. For me it's Home Alone. I wouldn't know how to paint an egg or how to behave at a Seder table. Dare I say I would squirm given the Israeli oppression of Palestinians? Liberation cuts both ways. 

I contend the real holiday in April is National Poetry Month. Both the Jesus and Exodus stories are fables which some of us pretend to take literally. It's not a bad thing to worship what were once poems, metaphors for the emergent spring with a sax in the foxglove and trumpet in the daffodil. Any reason to be buoyant is good enough for me.

Buoyancy may be wrong word since T.S. Eliot tagged April as the cruelest month in the opening line of The Wasteland. How did he know? I suppose human folly can always be counted upon. Cruel indeed as the shock of awakening brings us unfulfilled expectations. Referencing that crime against humanity we call World War I, April was the month when military action began again wasting a generation of young men.

Perhaps it was Eliot's rejection of all myths, pagan and pious, surrounding spring. Could it be he is saying we are on our own in this pilgrimage? What appears to be calm and joyful with certitude gives way to ignorant armies clashing in the night (Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach).

On the other hand (there's always another hand) what can hurt by conjuring the season's burst of renewal celebrating its razzle-dazzle? We might follow Emily Dickinson down a lane of yellow leading the eye / into a purple wood / whose soft inhabitants to be / surpass solitude.

If happiness is fleeting it becomes our purpose in life to catch it. Jane Kenyon put it this way: Happiness is the uncle you never knew about / who flies the single engine plane / onto a grassy landing strip, hitchhikes / into town and inquires at every door / then finds you asleep in mid-afternoon / as you do so in the unmerciful / hours of your despair.

Leave it to Robert Frost to remind us how the sun lets go / ten million silver lizards out of snow...But if I thought to stop the wet stampede / and caught one single lizard by the tail.../ I have no doubt I'd end by holding none. The second stanza brings in how the wizard moon turns the swarm to rock and holds them all until day, / one lizard at the end of every ray. / The thought of me attempting such a stay.

Both Eliot and Frost allow the shadow side. Whatever stay he hears among its fractured and uncertain world would be a momentary one. But moments strung together are all we have. If April is cruel so is all emergent life. It is and it isn't. We can all be poets alert to layers of meaning inherent in everything. All light is available light.

As for Testaments one and two I regard them as enduring poems, nothing less. The Israeli newspaper, Haaretz put it this way: There is no evidence to suggest Jews were ever enslaved in Egypt in large numbers. They most certainly did not build the pyramids. When they arrived in the Promised land they, too, enslaved the Canaanites. It was the custom of the day. 

Jesus and Moses went up the hill to fetch the Word. Too bad the eleventh commandment wasn't: It's OK to eat shellfish but not OK to hold slaves.

As a footnote to the above, last night I watched a a most poignant and artful movie, Mr. Harvey Lights a Candle, on Amazon. I regard my immersion into this film as my own religious experience. I would even call it poetic. Rather than a tall tale meant for one tribe to cohere while vilifying the other here was a story striking a universal chord.

The Toll

Ask not for whom the bell.

The dental assistant becomes a sniper.

Greengrocers and florists stop the convoy.

Destroyed tanks smolder among the crops.

Kyiv defended by librarians, accountants and teachers.

Unlived lives reduced to a number among body bags.

A headless doll found in the rubble.

Bombing his own with incendiary lies.

Ignorant soldiers looking for WW II Nazis.

Time itself has been struck running counter-clockwise into decades past .

Grass turns to blades.  

Neighbors in Brighton Beach, no longer speaking.

Baby carriage from Potemkin rolls down steps again.

Soft skin in his palm hardened into a fist.

War Crimes a redundancy.

 Civil War an oxymoron.

Innocence buried in the rubble.

Up from the shelters they danced a ferocious tango.

Bombs from 10,0000 ft. answered by painted eggs hatching.

 

 

Movie Moments, Real and Imagined

Won’t you sit down? 

I think this went onto the cutting room floor about fifty years ago. I’d never heard it said in real life.

 

I’m walking here, I’m walkin.

Ratso Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman) slamming a taxicab, stopping traffic in Times Square to cross the street. I wouldn’t advise trying this on the 405 but he is the least among us, those words an anthem for the marginalized.

 

Shall we risk the trifle? 

Delivered to Jean Moreau by Joan Plowright, in a half-giggle, conspiring over high tea, both no longer young. Naughty, naughty. 

I want to say one word to you, Benjamin. Plastics. 

You mean those plastics that have clogged our oceans and choked our fish. The plastics disallowed in markets in favor of canvas bags, replaced by paper straws. That plastic!

 

Such a spot of bother.

Words which could have come of out of the mouth of Lord Grantham in Downton Abbey when told his valet was arrested for dubious reasons.

  

The problems of three people don’t amount to a hill of beans.

So said Bogey to a bewildered Ingrid, the words having been written by the Epstein brothers at a stop sign on their way to the studio, nowhere near Casablanca.

 

I like to talk to a man who likes to talk.

Sydney Greenstreet speaking to Bogey in the Maltese Falcon, followed by an enormous belly laugh filling the room while Peter Lorre mutters something inaudible.

 

There is a specialist in Vienna who has developed an experimental surgery. It’s our only chance.

The bearded doctor with a monocle declares success as he removes the bandages to the chagrin of the greedy nephews imagining new-found riches unaware the rich mogul has left his fortune to his pet turtle.

 

It’s not what it looks like. I can explain everything.

Actually, it is what it looks like, Cary. It’s about time you and Grace or Audrey or Eva Marie came clean. Suave and debonnaire can take you just so far.

 

Now look here waiter, I asked you for more Pinot Noir ten minutes ago. Do you realize who you’re talking to? I’m the guest of honor in charge of North American Operations.

I heard you. Do you realize who you are talking to? I’m Vito, the sommelier, in charge of the wine cellar.

 

We have to talk.

Uh, oh, this can mean only one thing and it isn’t about the burnt toast; more like your life is about to become toast.

 

You’re probably wondering why I called you all here today.

Brace yourself for a transfer to South Dakota where that raise promised eleven years ago will never happen.

 

How long has it been since your last confession?

Trump: I never confess to anything. If I replace your old organ and repair the stained-glass window will that buy me absolution?

 

 

 

 

 

My Father's Father

How he made his way, 130 years ago,

from there to here. There,

being this very spot in today’s newspaper

fertilized by dead bodies

in the indifferent spin of seasons.

 

How he hid from the clean chin and moustache,

buried himself in a cellar of potatoes,

how he got here riding a shoot

of the potato, swallowing his scream,

boots across the nonsense of borders.

How he staggered into steerage.

 

I know this because no one ever spoke of it.

I know it as the truth of my imagining.

I heard all the silence of the sorrows

my father had swallowed

yet how gentle he was as if sprouted from weeds.

He bloomed between thorns.

Now the children's children 

of Cossacks are falling

from clean, shiny mines and bombs

in the cyclic atrocity of history

while others are huddled in cellars.

Do they hear echoes of hooves overhead?

Have they visions of black tubers or know

of their fallen on top of the bearded fallen?

Can new light, briefly gorgeous, emerge 

through the shrapnel of thorns?

  

 

 

 

 

Enough With the Slap

Watching the self-congratulatory Oscars got me imagining how I might be sitting there among the nominated few rehearsing my spontaneous remarks­, and my aw-shucks moment when my name is called.

I’d probably klutz my way to the stage wondering how the losers were coping with the crumpled speeches in their tux or purses which we will never hear. Am I hearing myself being silently cursed, how the studio practically bought my Oscar with all those billboards and full-page ads?

Of course, I must feign equal parts shock, humility and chutzpah. It’s all theater, after all and there’s only one take. I’ll say I wasn’t prepared for this but I was in the neighborhood anyway so I just dropped in.

Then I’d better drop the names of my fellow actors whom I barely put up with on the set. I wouldn’t want to get a karate chop to my kishkes for neglect. I know everyone at my table was high on coke or meth anxious to party through the night and a few are already in anger management programs.

Actually, I’ve been rehearsing this moment for years since I started out as an extra in crowd scenes and worked my way up as a dead body with a tag on my toe trying not to giggle as the coroner cracked a joke. 

How I got a speaking part I’ll never know but I want to thank the best boy, gaffer and the grip. I never got it straight who gaffed and who gripped. And then there is my favorite person, the caterer without whom I might be mistaken for a cadaver back in the morgue.

Finally, I’d have to thank my loving family, especially my daughters who have done well in life by knowing when to ignore my advice. I told them not to stay up so late even though they are pushing sixty or beyond. And a shout out to the dog I never had  and to Jack, my doppelganger; when I'm thirsty, he drinks. Special thanks also to my 4^th grade teacher who cast me as Miles Standish rather than the turkey in the Thanksgiving play.

The music is playing and two goons are approaching to drag me off the stage. I have no parting zinger anyway.

I called my sister later to tell her the good news. She said, Do what you have to do.  

 

 

 

Life On Hold

I’m glad my call is important to you but apparently some things are more important.

I'm happy to hear he’s away from his desk right now. We all need a break know and then.

No, I don’t know his extension.

Should I be congratulating you now that your menu has changed?

I’m sure you’re experiencing a high call volume. Have you considered hiring more staff?

I’ll go with jazz for now. Can I change my mind after a while?

No, I can’t call back between midnight and three.

I already went to your website. That’s why I’m calling.

I’ve given you the last four numbers of my Social Security now you want to know my favorite movie? I can only say my least favorite is Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Now, you’re telling me your mailbox is full.

Wait, don’t hang up.

I’ve been waiting so long I’ve read the entire newspaper, the weather report in Asia, the police blotter and the obits. For a minute I thought I spotted my name.

Perhaps I was abandoned as a child and you've opened up the old wound.

The grandchildren have grown up. I’ve got the Neptune Society on the other line.

If you’ve changed your menu again, I’ll have the chef’s salad.

Now I’ve forgotten why I called.

I think it had something to about paramedics coming over. I couldn’t manage to perform a Heimlich maneuver on myself.

Yes, I know my call will be answered in the order it was received. I am trying to get on your queue in case something happens the day after tomorrow.

 

Majority of One

One of the reasons and possibly the only reason I liked Bob Hope as a kid was the way he crossed the line from standard comedy to bring in current events. His humor was topical, but barely.

Even then there was something in me that didn’t love a wall. I smell trouble with anything divisive or exclusionary which separate people. Nationalism keeps cartographers busy with different inks but also breed wars.

If I had my way I would abolish states; start with three or four districts and call it at that until we learn to grow up. We are a nation, not a confederation. After that we can just settle for a hunk of landmass known as North America. 

Of course I don’t expect this to happen this afternoon or even the day after tomorrow. It is my idealized wish.

I suppose we must endure each ethnic group and sub-group reclaiming their identity. I see this as a stage out of colonialism but I envision a day when mankind finds its common humanity in spite of its differences. I am not calling for a broad leavening into one enormous mush. Paradoxically, the preservation of certain identities can lead to universality.

In the same way, specificity in a poem often strikes a chord felt by everyone. I dismiss categories which divide poetry from prose. In literature I often find more truth in fiction than non-fiction. Novels fabricate themselves into wisdom while essays  inflate, distort and indulge in redundancies battering the reader into submission. (Sort o like this.)

Did I spot a Reuben sandwich on the menu of a trattoria and Chinese chicken salad at a Jewish deli? Bring me the fusion menu.

Let us also erase the artificial border between entertainment, sports, business and the minefield of politics. Actors, whether on the stage, screen, halls of Congress or playing field, running around in colored underwear are all in the cast of this great human drama. For a brief time, they have a platform. If their image can sell cereal their voice can move minds, at least until the day when they return to chopped liver like the rest of us. Of course, we can always turn a deaf ear to their pleas.

It was a good nigt for deaf ears as Coda was the Academy’s choice for best film. This may serve to build a bridge between the deaf and hearing worlds.

I know, I know, the Ukrainian border with (or from) Russia asserts their sovereignty. True enough only because the bully country has devolved into unconscionable ways. Let us not regress into global tribalism. Can not individuation coexist with the universal and us and them thinking become just us.

One day, before our orbiting piece of dust withers away, we must put away our squabbles and regard ourselves as brothers and sisters looking after one another, citizens of the Planet Earth as custodians. A majority of one people.