Planet of the Blind

Auntie History wants a small life
But she can’t get it
Things balloon
Even the death of a mouse
Becomes Napoleonic
Her needlepoint
Is a wall of hieroglyphs
She’d reverse engineer everything
Make a circus tent
Into a simple hat
But small things
Won’t let her
Negentropy builds
Systems grow
She can’t say
Who is doing the measuring
She thinks
She should have married Nietzsche
When she had the chance

Uncle History imagines a world without words
He knows that the place would kill him
So he’s essentially suicidal
Persistent too—keeps thinking
No language
People free to do as they wish
His face darkens like Rousseau
The prospect
A planet minus nouns
No one to keep track of things
And Uncle’s grave unmarked
Perhaps an old mule walking there
To nibble the grass
He just can’t snap out of it
He knows he should
He knows lots of things
That’s the trouble

Suppose I told you about the killing
Not of enemies but your neighbors
You’d say it can’t happen here
Until you’re forced, until its clear
And rubbing your eyes does nothing
They’re innocent the murdered ones
Latin: not harming—innocent
Gunned down, people you know
Or knew—or knew—or knew
We listen for their steps
But they’re already gone
The good ones
People next door

Its the sort of rain
That starts in late afternoon
And now all the houses stand alone
Women and men forget their names
Though some
Still carry pocket watches

**

America
Is like seasickness
But without the ship
On a ship they bring you
Consommé and toast

**

Carl Jung:

We can certainly hand it to Augustine that all natures are good, yet just not good enough to prevent their badness from being equally obvious.

This is also seasickness.

**

Run around in childhood
In old age run around in your head

**

I need the alms of my own kindness

**

Jung again:

Whatever happens in a given moment has inevitably the quality of that moment.

Here’s where our power resides: the given moment changes every time we remember it. As a small boy I had a toy monkey. I kept him in a cupboard. When I remember him today he’s my brother.

**

Difficulties are necessary for health, again, according to Jung.
I must be very healthy. Very.

**

Tell me about the music under the museum, below the sewer and beneath the bedrock. The original song of Manhattan. Whitman heard it. I want to hear it also.

The music says there are no intellectual shortcomings and you can be a genius without personality.

**

This seasickness and the song above are promises. Each of us, alone, must figure it out.

Uncle History is chained to words
Tied to avatars
He’s infused in church glass
He spins in the astronomers’
Ones and twos
And though
He can’t describe things himself
His digestion does the talking
Remember Chaplin’s stomach
How it outed him
When he was being polite
Its that uneasy burthen
Of intestines
It drove Stalin nuts
He heard bowels
All the time
You have to listen
It can’t be controlled

Dear Jesus: I’m Episcopalian
And seldom go to church—
I’ve excuses, I can’t drive
Which is necessary
In cities like mine
And being blind
The ride share company
Hates my guide dog
When they see her
They drive right past
So its a challenge
This business
Of church going
I tell myself
Everything’s a challenge
Which is what you did
And I walk the neighborhood
Sending love-beams
To my neighbors
Who, because
This is America
Seldom exit
Their houses
Driving straight in
To their garages
Which have
Electric doors
But I’m still out here
Beaming, Lord
As a blue jay
Goes about his business
Talking to no one

Auntie History reads Minturno
Its a pagan thing
Beauty is everywhere
But her hands are scarred
She’s the baker, the fishwife
The exile, the slave
She raises the book in her claws
Sees with exophthalmic eyes
That loveliness will cure you
If it doesn’t cause sickness
She has trouble turning pages
Toward the end so did Nietzsche
Who thought beauty was subjective
She smiles—
Neither shapes nor sounds
Or the black death
Were ever your own idea

More and more Uncle History
Likes less and less—
Hermes Trismegistus
“As above, so below”
What piffle!
He likes amanitas by the lake
“It isn’t difficult” he thinks
“To like a single mushroom”
Here and gone
With an excellent buzz

Someone is out to fool you
Uncle History knows all the someones
For instance he knew the boy
Who used to ring Strindberg’s doorbell
And hid in the bushes
August thought it was a ghost
In general storytellers are the easiest marks
Also when the facts are too plain
You can trick almost anyone
JFK wasn’t killed by a chinless psycho
It was (insert anyone)
Yes someone is out to fool you
This is why Uncle darns his own socks
And his wife darns hers
In an adjoining room
The boy who fooled Strindberg
Lived to be quite old
But he had holes in his socks