A GOSPEL FOR MY FATHER
“BEING BECOMING…”
—from “IMPROVISATIONS” by Vernon Frazer
1.
Big soundlessness
In the absence of mirrors
fonts face no sense
Poetry a line
vertical, quad-centered
splitting the page
but not between “You” or “I”
A poet muses:
“IF YOU PLAY (OR WORK) LONG ENOUGH, A FORM WILL ASSERT ITSELF”
My father’s daughter believes:
“IF YOU LIVE LONG ENOUGH, A BODY ASSERTS ITS WILL”
Daddy died. It’s been two months…
To be jailed by music
is to perceive music as something rationed
Words as cliffs—
how to be the most
hewn of rock climbers
with a chair ever-glued to one’s ass?
Is not mist inherently paratactic?
Impatience sources enthusiasm
2.
Word sculpted past raison d’etre
Begin with the chapter after Conclusion
Allow yourself one page
Insert [304] blank pages
The total divided by 8
—encompass the “half-signature”—
A book by You and Them
3.
The word embodying its meaning: palpable
lurid
palpable pulp-able
Ambiguity its own pleasure
meal in mouth
“spearmint cheese”? No.
Daddy is dead and you are not historical
The more a text is unnamed, the more deeply
it penetrated a body
I am a plus-sign
A plus so near to a cross so near to X
[READER, YOU INSERT A SCRAWLED X HERE
WITH YOUR HANDWRITING ]
One nota bene after another…
e.g., a column of words cannot be read
4.
the current feeling its electricity
“Daddy” defined as absence embodied
in the dim garage, a young lemon tree awaits
freedom from its small pot. Outside the garage,
ever-sunlit mountain
“junkyard dog” bespeaks only the junkyard
Jazz, the discipline…and reason
I lapse to paintings which know
how to be mute
Rose as axiom
Dante’s White Rose
5.
I told Daddy a joy:
Judas was the most loyal
for releasing God from the body
Goal: grief as anti-nuisance
so fine-tune the footnote
a writing in search of energy
“Word” is lonely
unless a sentence
raises possibility(ies)
Still,
a lonely effectiveness is possible
e.g.
Holy
6.
The author dies
when a poet’s name
becomes a signifier:
Olson
Or
Villa
Or
Rilke
Or
Whitman
Or
Tiempo
Or
Gamalinda
Or
_________________
Please Continue Filling In The Blank
Elsewhere, a tin can
falls down stone steps
waking pigeons into flight
sundering summer air
in-to a watercolor entitled “Romanticism”
Intimacy via individual words—
A word that forms its own
sentence paragraph novel
Rome
Paris
London
Tokyo
Bombay
Manila
Shanghai
Gloucester
Baguio
Bordeaux
Alba
Napa
City
Mountain
Body
Chatelaine
_________________
Please Continue Filling In The Blank
Specimens are compromises, not proofs
7.
If a song protrudes…
If?
Culture means a song inherently protrudes—
a nail rearing its head before rusting—
such is what we have come to…
8.
Mama ensured
Daddy had a fresh clean white
handkerchief
in the pocket
of the suit
he wore as he laid in his coffin
You cross the vertical line
with a horizontal line
to form a cross,
to cross
Eyes ever disrupt “a line of sight”
All poems are visual poetry. Fullstop.
How Daddy detested the start
of my dating days. My hair fell
in waves, falling beneath my knees.
Dark, shape-shifting waves.
He could never save me from the ocean
(not its water but its salt).
His wallet ever-open to swimming lessons
I consistently failed. I did succeed, once,
in swimming the length of a Barnard College pool
(hence, graduation: B.A., Political Science)
but only by keeping my head down and
ceasing to breathe. Who wants to live
like that? Flung dark waves from my ignorant
but blissful head. Flung drawings against air.
Black and white drawings. Drawing
Words. Shape-shifting words. My hair
my ink. Each white strand viciously
plucked as a battle cry against
the silencing of poems.
9.
The heat
as one writes toward light
Word melts to image—
I don’t want to live like that…
Struggle for innocence—
smoothly-surfaced moon
against which scalpels melt
I said I loved him
and Daddy cried
because he knew
he was dying
and I loved him
but he was dying
but I loved him
and he was dying
and I loved him
How precious, the word
IS
10.
____ members of the Wilmington Methodist Church
donated ___ checks in denominations ranging
from $25 to $100 to total $1,587.00. Donations to
my mother, reflecting a culture
of helping with funeral expenses or members
of the bereaved’s family. Mama, in turn,
donated the money back to Wilmington United
Methodist Church. Dad ended his life as a true
American: he became a tax-deduction. A gift
is inherently an illusion unless unless unless
unless
Bankruptcy = language masquerading as history
“We’re all from Cleveland”—so what?
Even delivery boys of thrice-heated Chinese
deserve decent tips. They delivered.
Daddy loved Chinese food. But he is a poet’s
father. He loved Chinese food because
he loved food. I love words because you
are reading
my tongues
tasting each inch of the world—
GOSPEL GOSPEL GOSPEL
11.
Dear Daddy,
Mama is happy
and safe
as you wanted me
to be. I am
becoming…
Love,
Eileen
Soon, no word will
hammer me
down
past buckled knees.
I see my face beneath snow
as fires leap with my permission : :
a face a wave
of joyful wrinkles : :
Nota bene: artificial but white teeth
revealed by a smile : :
You, there, You here—
does my smile make you
rejoice until you forget
the stake to which you’re bound
as flames leap, like the snow of Paradiso?
[GRIN]
Emphasize:
G!R!I!N!
eileen tabios recently released her 14th poetry
collection, Dredging for Atlantis (Otoliths,
2006). In 2007, she will release two multi-genre collections -- SILENCES: The Autobiography of Loss
(Blue Lion, Spring 2007) and The
Light Sang As It Left Your Eyes (Marsh Hawk Press, Fall 2007).
She performs poetry at her blog, "The Blind Chatelaine's Poker
Poetics" and serves as the Poet Laureate for Dutch Henry Winery in
St. Helena, CA where she arduously and long-sufferingly researches the
poetry of wine.
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