Ocular Allusions

What it is about the seasons lately, failing to meet my expectations by, one might say—at least here in New England—continually failing to season, has ignited in me a nagging sense of loss and, well, just plain glumness. (Nagging because it's a rare Day that performs as it should within the framework of its given season; Day has become defiant, belligerent—refusing to comply, he turns away and knocks Expectation on its head. He rebels! I nag!) This is the glum loss about which I am writing in a series of poems, a poetic sequence, for a poetry class that I'm currently taking with Catherine Imbriglio at Brown Continuing Studies.

There are twelve of us, poets (though I'd hardly plunk myself in this particular category, but I will fake it for the duration of the six weeks), casting a sequence of poems linked, for the most part, by either form or theme. And I will fake it further because I need to believe that this can be done. Six poems, or more, linked by this glum/loss theme. Belligerent Days that become belligerent Seasons that become belligerent Years!

The good news: my eyesight is improving. It's true! Maybe it's the changing light of our seasons. Maybe I really AM growing younger! When my ophthalmologist had me sit behind what she called, and what I could not then spell, a phoroptor—a word I couldn't release from my mind, what I heard as and what I quietly recited so I'd not forget: FROPPER,  FROPPER, FROPPER! (what a strange name for an instrument) (as it turns out FROPPER is a social networking site specializing in Indian dating)—she found that, within the past year, I was minus (or is it plus in phoroptor language?) .50 from the prior year's examination. That puts me at -3.25! Which means that maybe I won't need readers in the supermarket. Heh. And wasn't I happy for the phoroptor, even if I couldn't spell it, but now that I can the image in my mind has turned to a beast—a highly photogenic (and perhaps Vietnamese) dinosaur.  PHOROPTOR!

That was this morning. When I left my ophthalmologist's office I was so happy to be at positive (or is it negative?) phoroptation I decided to take a little walk so as to let it all sink in. And there, to the left, to where I turned my rejuvenated oculi, was this magnificent, versicolor (word of the day) tableau and I quick-grabbed (because Day, like a smart-mouthed teenager, can turn on me at any moment) my iPhone and shot what was, what is, undoubtedly, Day behaving like Fall! Compliant FALL!

(This is not good for my poetic sequence—which might very well be titled Ocular Delusions. And which now seems as old as a dinosaur.)

And because my disposition has shifted widely from glum to blithe and I cannot, at this very moment, be too disappointed in Day (even if he still knocks Expectation sideways), I'm going to sign out by offering one last poem (not one of mine) from yet another former U.S. Poet Laureate, which shall also serve to top off the grand callithump parade that is to come (believe what I say—it will!). 

Introducing Philip Levine (in a video of much better quality than that of which I was able to capture), all the way from Brooklyn, NY, giving us a little lesson and believing everything he says:

Black Wine

Have you ever drunk the black wine - vino negro -

of Alicante?  The English dubbed it Red Biddy

and consumed oceans of it for a pence a flagon.

Knowing nothing - then or now - about wine,

I would buy a litre for 8 pesetas - 12 cents -

and fry my brains.  Being a happy drunk,

I lived a second time as a common laborer

toiling all night over the classic strophes

I burned in the morning, literally burned,

in an oil barrel outside the Palacio Guell,

one of the earliest and ugliest of Gaudi's

monuments to modernismo.  Five mornings

a week the foreman, Antonio, an Andalusian,

with a voice of stone raked over corrugated tin,

questioned the wisdom of playing with fire.

He'd read Edgar Allen Poe in the translations

of Valle-Inclan and believed the poets

of the new world were madmen.  He claimed an affair

with Gabriella Mistral was the low point

of his adolescence.  As the weeks passed

into spring and the plane trees in the courtyard

of the ancient hospital burst into new green,

I decided one morning to test sobriety,

to waken at dawn to sparrow chirp and dark clouds

blowing seaward from the Bultaco factory,

to inhale the particulates and write nothing,

to face the world as it was.  Everything

was actual, my utterances drab, my lies

formulary and unimaginative.

For the first time in my life I believed

everything I said.  Think of it: simple words

in English or Spanish or Yiddish, words

that speak the truth and no more, hour after

hour, day after day without end, a life

in the kingdom of candor, without fire or wine.

"Friday Night Frolic" — Pretty Little Lamb(chop)

Look, with an album named Mr. M, cryptic lyrics hidden therein, boys slinking about their own island, scratching and whispering, mocking emotion, well, it seems this evening calls for the proper attire—though, the Suburban Soliloquist is having difficulty locating her black Ray-Bans. (Maybe that's because she doesn't own black Ray-Bans.)

But she's got the T-shirt and she's guessing the geeky Kurt Wagner wouldn't mind her slipping it on. Not at all. Especially if she were pouring him a glass of white. Which she is. He will arrive, Wagner, yes, this very night (tell her traveling hubby and she will deny it), but she can't tell you when or how, or else...

And because the Suburban Soliloquist is in the midst of packing (of which she can't, or won't?, again elaborate), and feels at this moment that she can say it no better, she will permit the Village Voice—which does not hide, scratch or whisper—to speak for her. But first, she'll tell you this: Lambchop is a band. True. Lambchop is  also a...

...vanishingly rare band allowed to exist over several geologic eras of pop-culture time, pursuing a singular, demented muse. Lambchop is an island, removed from the squalor of everyday world, so terrifically inscrutable that you even start looking for significance in their name: not pork chop, but lamb chop. Surely that must mean something. 

Mr. M is, at once, one of the band’s most open-hearted and acidic records. It opens with a flourish of strings that invoke memories of Frank Sinatra’s great, gloomy indigo-jazz records with string arranger Nelson Riddle. The clothes are old ones, slightly threadbare, and they are ones Lambchop have a winking relationship with, dating back at least to 2001′sNixon. You can smell the used-record-sleeve on them. And so, apparently, can Wagner, something he’s quick to draw your attention to. When he enters the song, he appears to be both commenting ironically on its motion and somehow directing its action: “Grandpa’s coughing in the kitchen/ But the strings sound good/ Maybe add some flutes/ And how do get the cups out from over there?”

  Lambchop - If Not I'll Just Die by MergeRecords

*   *   * 

And now, she's pouring him that glass of white...

  Lambchop - Gone Tomorrow by City Slang

The wine tasted like sunshine in the basement.  (For some peculiar reason, this little nugget nudges the Suburban Soliloquist to reach for her 1960s flashcards.)

What were they doing in the basement? Hmm...

Wagner, and his pretty, pretty Lambchop. How they do it they'll never tell.


Listen to more Lambchop here. Lambchop visits Jimmy Fallon, late night, tonight.

(To be honest, er, um, the Suburban Soliloquist has no secret information, she's not even sure who wrote this post.)

(But, the wine did taste like sunshine in the basement.)

Drunk and Naked and Running Wild

Internet source unknown

It wasn't always all chocolate hearts and roses. It wasn't always so romantic. The Romans had a way about them, and legend has it that in the third century—when public showing of pagan rituals hadn't yet been outlawed—during the days from February 13th through the 15th, the Romans celebrated Lupercalia (named after Lupa, a she-wolf who cared for Remus and Romulus)—a festival in which the city was purified, evil spirits released, and health and fertility channeled. It was a bloody indulgent mess.

Goats and dogs were slain as sacrifice. In the name of Fertility, women were willingly slapped with the bloody hides of those slain animals. There was a matchmaking lottery, and men drew women's names from an urn. They all paired up and everyone got drunk and naked and ran around with goatskin thongs, the same with which the women were lashed.

And because the Romans made better lovers than fighters, their Emperor, Claudius II, forbid single men from marrying, lest they'd never leave their love making for war making. This is when a righteous guy named Valentine (maybe a priest) defied Claudius's order and performed secret marriages for young lovers. In return, Claudius ordered Valentine's death on, perhaps, February 14th. But before he was executed, Valentine was imprisoned, and fell in love with the jailor's daughter, to whom he wrote a loving letter that he signed: "From your Valentine."

There you have it. Oh what a time it was.

But things changed in the fifth century when the church decided to "christianize" the pagan festival, and the Roman lottery system for matchmaking and other rites were outlawed. The festival was civilized (or done away with) by the church, and Lupercalia went the way of Byzantine sports. I suppose this was for the best, as both running around drunk and naked, and chariot racing, could be rather dangerous.

Well, I don't know about you, but I kind of prefer the old Roman way. Down and dirty, drunk and naked (except for the fertility flogging). And no mass marketing, no cards or chocolates or roses.

And here, one more civilized thing for your day of hearts and lovin' (in the language of love):



I want to sing to you eternal stories,
And of falling suns and full moons, and dark nights...