The Blackbook (part 2)
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| *[[The Redbook]] | *[[The Redbook]] | ||
| *[[The Bluebook]] | *[[The Bluebook]] | ||
| *[[The Greenbook]] | *[[The Greenbook]] | ||
Current revision
Collection of poetry by Steven Adkins (2002)
Part 1 | Part 2
Stanstead
a twenty-minute turnaround
an ambiguous man
heat thru the windows
memories of a cunning plan
thrice in one day it was spoken of
but it has yet to be foiled
air foiled boiled alive emotions
not a froth but asunder
and now
a preoccupation
with death
an estate worth guarding
family treachery
and loyalty
I am perceptive enough to know
which side my bread is buttered on
Horatio Hornblower sits on the railing
he gives an approving look
or so I hope
Obi Wan you’re my only hope
Sir Alec Guinness you’re my only hope
Meat the mince pie you’re my only hope
England
for all my whining
I’m sad to be leaving
if only because
I leave 2 more people behind
that I love
Perpignan
I don’t know if
I’ve gotten on the right train
I’ve certainly gotten on at the wrong time
hoping, if asked, to play the dumb American
It’s going my way, so I grab it
Seems as though it’s leaving at the time
it should be
To get to Narbonne
I’ll switch then, for a train to Toulouse
And there
In the familiar
repose of
my room
which is not
my room
I will
lean back
smoke a bowl
wonder what to do
next
----
There is flatness
to the light
very bright
crisp shadows
one can see the soldiers
the lazy dog lounging
like in some
novel by Camus
they are not there, of course
but they are
Narbonne
a cathedral
like a fortress
thru the power lines
(rises above the vineyards)
the most amazing pipe organ
I have ever seen rises off the wall,
floating massive
yet
Narbonne seems parched
and streets
stink
of
piss
and the beauty of it all
is that
you can go back the way you came
and end up
somewhere else
(and heat still rises)
Toulouse – Croix Daurade
if only just
to write something
waiting for the landlord
I have spent the day
removing wallpaper
listening to music
all the chums are elsewhere
GR in Paris
MJ in Beograd
his grandmother has died
JB hasn’t answered his door and his
phone has a message I do not recognise
there are no words
and I must do
an etat d’lieu
a state of the place
I check a list and
sign for key
we both get a chance to agree
on what the apt. should resemble
when I split
w/2 month’s notice
my problem is obvious
in that I only speak a little French
and even fewer words for the
various items of furniture I am afforded
then too, I must call and confirm….
these are trifles
but then again, I am stoned
trying to start that
one too many
with the prearranged idea
comes from reading
Litkicks
Baguette w Roc and marmite cookies
Banana
Yoghurt
Noodles
Chicken
I have become obsessed
instant impact
been around a while
say instantly
quips
deranged
arranging the [?]
to form a life
but there is no life
but in living
and there is no living
but in the rues
avenues, boulevards
alleys
(there are in the boudoir)
Jesus
At an all time low
While you were dying
So was the dove
Ramallah, Palestine
Yasser Arafat Ensconced
Attack on Iraq
afoot
so whack, jack
We see the end in a
parade of turbans
perhaps?
is this a racist paranoid
fantasy
fantastic seeds
glom together
and form
self-perpetuating
targets
an iron bar
clad
in
linen
A way to hedge all
bets against a plateau
of the oil
gotta have the OIL
gotta support one
camp
for the sake of
dividing the other
flouting a misperceived
clout
no doubt
in this camp,
sparky
Entonc’d
mercifully
therefore
and
tombed
a jamboree
a conclave
of hayseeds
gettin’ back
with the Paps
the ole haps
one oil barren
against
another
“shoulda played hardball with ‘em”
the old coot snorts without irony
and
we are lit with candles
(light vigils)
Afghan man
wandering the desert
eating stones
three….
five….
three….
and the Gobi of Time
discovered
a new animal game
skin like leather
so soft like deerskin
so tangy like venison
so so so so
he heeds the Gobi of Time
just as he heeds the sun
so,
until
you have heard
young white frenchwomen
singing ragga style on the mike
wicked selecta
(with everything about it
wrong)
it was so right
ragged clef of impoverished
youth mentality
a land of shopworn
homosocial vitality
to quote Julie :
“they dance
like they are
on a field
of rugby”
a multitude of birds
twizzling
something going hoo hoo
like an owl
or part o the whippoorwill’s cry
another buzzes like a cricket
how many unique
voices can be pulled
from the mayhem
tagged, sorted, having
plied thru the curious
friction
of sounds
that are dancing
and one little fellow
has just exploded
into action
or maybe it
is a woman
i think of gossiping
over the back
fence
getting excited
over things
like only
people
with nothing
to do
with it
can
these sprightly
fellows
jumping
the sound currents
providing a sonic
topsoil –
aural
lichens
but only
the
occasional
mushroom
Perhaps it all started with
the Mushroom Club
I was forever starting clubs
and joining them
Boy Scouts of course
soccer
oodles of other dumb shit
in high school and college
things I couldn’t stomach now –
or even then
difference is….
or is it that
there is not
one of
them,
either?
The guts to stand alone
An improper gesture
an impolitic mood
creamed over in
delicious structure
torn by a
natural unconventionality
scribbling poems
leaving jobs and houses
and even homes
friends, family
one tries to view
it benevolently
a sacrifice one makes, wot?
but ya know
it’s just a
lie
you are running
from them
horrified by
your repellence
and love?
distance
makes the
heart
grow fonder?
I’ve found
otherwise;
Distance makes
the heart
go SICK
grow plants that crack its concrete
subterranean motions
piles of pericardial
rubble
moonbase
to Hammerstain,
come
in,
please!
marketing, slow unfurling canopy
bought feathery
creaking
wooden life
asunder in the blown wind
cracked by heaven
catered by hell
April
Toulouse – Capitole
APRIL 1
The fool’s day
in upside down
the wood beneath my feet
the beams overhead
the slight breeze
thru the skylight
I hear the scrapings
thru the walls
like the sound
you hear thru
the hull of a
ship
a slight hum
in the fridge
(or is that me?
I just had
another coffee)
Yes I must be
humming
this new lair
this speckled refuge
a place to
make my own
to fill up
a commitment
in a land
in which
I have
no papers
If I were to
take off across
a livid terrain
hues like rainbows
sickly purple
yellow like sickly ghosts
stars, lightning bolts
small ringed planets
dancing about me
looking down
and seeing rooftops
I would have
squandered myself
Instead
I bring things
down to rust
and terra cotta,
rose-colored
brick
effaced by
shadows
under eaves
nooks where
centenarian
cobwebs
have a
quiet eye
over grey cobbles,
wood that
is cracked
and obdurate,
the
three
towers
which
greet
me
as I peep my head
above the
ceiling
to take it
all in
Morning is a
grey rectangle in the
roof
coffee percolates
on a two-burner hotplate
anticipate class
level 2
even
now
it hits
“kicks like a mule”
like we
used to say
of an especially
well-packed
bongload
even
now
it hits
last nite I dreamt
of a return
one of my
many childhood homes
apparently a girl
had since been
murdered in the living
room
the house was all done
up in classic oneiric
dark and cool
strange cones of dim
light emanating
from nowhere
like in a David Lynch film
for some reason
I had to spend
the night in that
living room
and expected a visitation
@ any moment
oh yeah, and a friend
was in a cage and
we could not find a key
I have always been an anxious lad
but have the drugs,
the booze, the broads
the extremity of all of it
ruined me?
I want to say
I have a program
but truly
I am buffeted
and not in the daoist sense
perhaps I’m just bored
(as in driven thru
with tortuous screws)
And who wields the screwdriver?
A pork cutlet
sizzles
I can’t be bothered
to cook up
some company
for it
I am not a cutlet
(yet)
I can be bothered to
cook up some
company for myself
but don’t know how?
I await company
in my garret
(yes it is under
the eaves
and the roof
has beams)
2 girls
1 mexican
1 italian
I would fuck
either of them
if they would
have me
I have had sex
once in the last
7 months
I masturbate
furiously
you see it
before you
on the page
and my name is Carlos Garcia
John Coltrane
and J. Jonah Jameson
play chess
in the doorway
Heavy-lidded, John
and J. Jonah
strangely calm
His cigar does not
sputter
with
congenital
indignance
He does not bark orders
He plays chess
Strangely calm
one might almost say
indifferent
they listen to
Ravel, Satie
Debussy
--the impressionists--
are calm
they see themselves
as enacting
a certain nocturne
long after
the vespertine
has curved
across the
horizon
the crescent
cutting crescents
like jazz
or language
SO! There it goes!
Burns itself
out like
fingers
rheumatoid
arthritic
foundering after
years in the service
chinese finger prisons
broken rain
psoriasis, yeah
psoriasis
(cysts)
a heart enchained
it sits there
and pulses like
a frog
she crosses the
Place Daurade
bangs the gong
slowly
carries no torch
a gradive of sorts
a Nadja
who disappears
around corners
turns stone footsteps
in the night
she wore a White
coat and had
a headful of curls
And I, moving along
searched for batteries
vous avez les piles? double A?
oui…
and hence music
cigarettes
Anna from Columbia
was that you
on the other side of
the mirror?
My face,
half obscured
in darkness
the smoke
from Halfzware Shag
twisting about
dancing in my nostrils
cold air upon my
bare arms
and the piano saying, Go!
the taste of loneliness
in my mouth
No more cheap tricks
after so many false
starts
tics
abominations
appropriations
buggering
one another in
the park
last night I saw
a prostitute with
a flapper’s ‘do
a fur coat
boots up to
the knees
after I left my
two dinner companions
circled back for
another look
something about the
height
the gams….
a man that good-
looking
is still a man
meat in the fridge
unfrozen
inedible
du Matin…
awake,
secretly
like a mouse
without flourish
a 19th century
mouse
waistcoat adjusted
dental powder applied
liberally
got a clock to
run up today
gotta get there
before those 3
blind bastards
from down the
way start
clattering about
attracting the
cat the old
lady with broom
the exterminator
with his pails
of arsenic
trauma
has flattened
itself out for me
a relatively
untragic life
not punctuated by
sharp horrors
but spread thin
like a balloon
I felt its skin throb
on the underside of
my consciousness
constantly
a nag
a fleeting phrase
as my head hits pillow
running,
a blur
constant motion
but never quite legible
what have I forgotten to do?
why did I say that?
sometimes
a 10-year-old faux pas
makes me groan audibly
for this, I get to
live in France
still constantly anxious
but more
fruitfully
distracted
And in Gosford Park
You have a movie
that….
I think of Altman
“England is more civilised”
I dunno Robert, but I
get the point
Unlike the Baldwins
the Basingers
I kept my promise
George won the election
and I am here
AND IN
Steven Adkins
you have a man-child
so preoccupied with
the minute tasks of daily living
he forgets to live
I think of….
Nothing comes to mind
a reflexive verb
a cranium whose inner surface
is lined with mirrors
all the friends I have left behind
all the friends I have shared with
the openness
for all that, always a corral
something kept back, hidden
what?
One hopes for a yearning for greatness
as opposed to the unfortunate
reality of madness
Like a clock
doesn’t really feel change
as it marks the minutes
and the days
the clockface unchanging
the hands sojourn
back to the same points
there is nothing familiar about them
no recognition between the
face and the hand
unlike the one-way recognition
when
the dying soul
fingering objects in his pocket
looks into the magic mirror
of recognition –
to see the future
and sees nothing
as it shuffles along blindly
no nose, no skin but ragged clothing
a bundle
barely an ensemble of mysterious
movements
a clock about to burst
AS soon as you get well
there, in the cistern
it sounds out again
you never have been able
to discern
the hieroglyphs of it movement
this sound that haunts you
more echo than origin
more effect than cause
long ago, something happened
some forceful push into a void
a hand reaching out from high clouds
not down but sideways
drops a crown in the wishing well
overrides the small desires of men,
pell-mell they scurry under veils
shapes barely discernible
caterpillars in silk tents
pitched in branchforks
forks that cannot feed
forks that cannot tune
vibrations to adjudicate the steady
wincing to delineate the pain
more effect than cause
more tide than moon
more less than more
more mores of moors
mooring barks in tumbling skies
No El Cid to shit legends
No Ali Baba to wink at death
just infinity, sorrow, regret
bets hedged against the typhoon
bets hinging upon a fixed gate
mercenary females guarding all of it
I admit it
I am shallow
very rarely hear this music
much less comprehend it when I do
can never tell you the genealogy of this sound
bubbling up thru the water
I am a character after all
a fiction
(with no character and my polestar drifts)
a ship in the night
with a lazy crew
can’t be bothered to act
maybe keel haul someone once and
a while
the sport of the cruel and the bored
wasps garnishing themselves for a feat
at dawn
a swarm of cut-rate sots
who haven’ the means to scare up
another round
would-be pirates farting anthems
to amuse themselves
to justify their sojourns in the
blubber boats
sleeves who cry upon themselves….
And the ports they call home are
also barren
And the women they left behind do not
light candles in the windows
And the bounty they seek has long since
disappeared
Breath on,
cold heart
blink, blind
eye
swell,
ye raisins
swell back into grapes
if you can
what is that about
old dogs and
new tricks?
some things cannot
be undone
the match cannot
suck in the flame
say “I’m only kiddin’”
some things are
not ready to die,
but die they must
lift a weary mouth
swallow mouthfuls of dust
go along for the ride
accept that they must rust
HAVING made a pass at 2 young ladies
the young lad wonders
He gets along well, without leering
or making innuendo
He asks rather politely if lovemaking
is in order
One responds, is that why you came down
here to visit me?
The other, curious, did you think
I wanted to, because I came up here?
Yes.
It would have been nice
He must have misjudged the chemistry
Why is it that a no can’t be simple?
He would understand that
But this surprise, this “ who me?” stance
Yes, he wants sexual release
He is timid
Why make it difficult
As if he has schemed under false pretence
It makes it seem like being nice is a lie
Either they want to, or not, simple
Must he be crass, up front
or the
Getting to know you, then timid proposal routine
Would it be better just to renounce the
whole thing altogether
Await a bold woman who hangs a
sign around her neck :
I want you
I must have you
or not
Your decision,
I’ve made mine
He awaits the woman free enough
to allow him the freedom to choose,
once she has made her own choices
goddamit
some illicit activity
drugs
prostitution
but no !
A surly lass –
who can blame her?
excusez-moi,
vouz travaillez ?
oui,
bien sûr
c’est combien ?
€100
Incroyable !
Not for me
after endless strolls around the station
the canals stinking of shit
I amble home
Scarf around my face like a burglar
Trenchcoat flying in the slight breeze
At 4 AM the streets are quiet
And I have kissed a Mexican girl today
done my best with a Colombian
and proposed a hooker
all to no avail
these sperm o’ mine sit idle
and bon chance n’est pas
avec moi
oh la !
qu’est-ce que je vais dire ?
rien, nada, nothing
THUNDERING CLASSICS
jovially, they sweat to the oldies
you are the only one
I am the only one
Minerals drop out of Heaven
they collect themselves into teeth
seeking out squares of light
to synthesize with
food for thought beating on the
spermaceti telegraph
Queequeg with his elegant harpoon
Long drawn out scenarios
Talking for hours in French
to no avail
and in my groin, something
is strained
you are the only one
I am the only one
NOT ready to quit
out of breath
4 flights of fancy
called “stairs”
or so I hear
let’s see if I can get
that thing I need
I don’t know what it is
but apparently
I’ll know it when I
find it
his elegant harpoon
catches a ray of sun
on its spike
the whale rolls over
the whale rolls over
I’ve got a 68-year-old uncle
who
thinks
T. Rex were before their time
How cool is that?
All those details
don’t help me
this pre-emptory funk
just sit there glumly
with a powder keg
under my heels
don’t help me get laid
And I imagine letters
that say
awright no more
I love you but this is it
I can’t pretend I don’t have
a pole-arm stuck thru me
aorta
this is the last you will hear
from me
don’t bother to write
I can’t hate
or ignore
you
but this is something I can do
extreme write
close the borders to the
immigrants that are
memories of yoo
Never throw anything away
those stubble end of hand-rolled cigs
when you stumble up stairs
having spent too many euros,
you will find them engarbaged
very necessary
and after all that hesitant
jibba jabba
MR. T a shadow who
admonishes
TV heroes worthless
yet worthy
(and you have forgotten how to
write poetry when beers sit
in your stomach)
The extreme right drops solicitations in
your mail box and you the
foreigner they may very well
eject
just like rock n’ roll
it falters, stammers
lusts
makes mistakes,
wonders….
and when it all jumps ship
like Herman Melville
in the Southern Islands
those vast golden-tipped seas
where nothing happens
but words
leap like fish….
fish,
so lonely
scales like dry skin
flaking from a
head
which resembles
beaker
that ridiculous muppet!
and the days are so long….
I.
In the END
the Pequod sinks
and our prophet
of love and fraternity
is saved from death
afloat on a coffin
the white whale has gone
the sharks with padlocked
mouths
do not molest him
and then comes Rachel
searching for her lost children
and finding only he –
an orphan
what of this strange reunion
parent and child
each seeking the other
that makes them what they are
how strange that they cannot BE
without that other to define them
for to be a son demands a father
a father, a son
but of man?
needst there be women to
complete him?
One hopes that
a man must
need alone be a son
and not a scholar
nor monk
nor lover
For as the scholar needs history
so too the monk his god
but far worse still
is the man who needs woman
II.
encalmed in a cool mist
the sound of the water
echoing through him
alone an almost
unimaginable vastness
for all the life underneath
him
millions of eager lives
under the thin lips of the horizon
he becomes a world unto himself
his life going on inside
while if somewhere on
some distant point of land
some watchman with
some powerful glass
were to fix this
eye upon this
he would see
nothing but an empty deck
sails fluttering useless,
limp
A strange purposelessness
in the voyage
A dangerous list
slack rigging
coursing wide circles
as the rudder bangs astern
unheld by any human hand
or any hand
at all
And a ship is a country
that cannot be governed alone
it must return to port
eventually
to nestle against
the bosom of the land
to bury its nose
in her hills
drink of her sweet wine
look upon the sea
from the land
and thus by comparison
appreciate the meanings of his voyage
and learn
for the man with no home
who ever voyages afar
has never really gone anywhere
at all
Thru the skylight
the sun is being
swallowed up by the clouds
this is their usual dance
consumption
grey digestion
specks of clear urine –
some call it “rain”
upon our heads
and finally
when the pale bulb
hangs so low in the west
so as to obscure most of the city
in long shadows
it reappears
This, apparently, is how Spring
celebrates commencement
in Toulouse
And a man with wounded hands
sits on the edge of being cold
A patch of blue sky
vaguely resembling Vietnam
discernible between the clouds
He remembers his father,
dead
and thinks of loneliness
And thinks of the many
times
When in the Cathedrals
and country churches
He has imagined himself
crumpling to the floor
His hands and feet awash in blood
a widening stain upon his belly
Perfect clarity
vision
Thru the tears and blood
streaming down his face
The tourists rushing towards him
confused
some crossing themselves
some angry – some kind of trick – it
must be!
And yet here it is
Who would cause themselves
such heinous wounds
What would be the point
To try and trump the desire
to be chosen
By choosing oneself
Ah!
But perhaps this is what
happens after all
(many are called,
few are chosen – or –
many are called,
few answer)
So like Napoleon in Italy
one must crown oneself
Declare oneself to be chosen
even if it turns out to be untrue
for if it be true that
“good things come to those who wait”
it is even more true that
“god helps those that help themselves”
so help yourself to whatever glories
are found wanting within you
laugh at death
wrap your loneliness around you as
a moat encircles a fortress –
the fortress of your heart
there’s a good view from the top
but it is lonely
up there
and cold
and with hands wounded
from the climb
there will always be some pain
reminding you
reminding you
not of any carefully drawn scenario
but like thunderclouds at night
under a new moon
like magician’s assistants
dressed in black velvet
holding mutely luminescent trumpets,
skulls, scimitars
like quiet widow whose
friends were the friends of her
dead husband
the reminders
will haunt but never embrace
will always be
at the corner of the eye
will not be there
to bear the burden of scrutiny
you will never quite reason them away
they peck away
slow as rust
diligent, patient, indifferent birds
“the bigger they are, the harder they fall”
head feet hands abdomen
man of clay
man of clay….
we are all, ultimately
men such as this
for that sun does come out
that ascendant spring
becomes the blazing furnace of
summer
under whose great light one’s
glory does shine right
but under whose heat that day
begins to harden
to begin in it’s very zenith
its journey back home
to dust
(for even as we begin to live
we begin to die)
so do not spend so
much time under grey skies
wishing for the sun
putting of until then
what can easily be achieved
today, now, this eternal
moment
this quiet moment
buoyed between
spaces both minute and vast
each moment a ship
on a puddle of time
crowding, jostling, merging
relaying messages of
hope and remembrance
messages which summon
as the clarion summons
the King
as the sun breaks open and
reaches down with vast arms
carries the prophet into the sky
for that brief glimpse of
the whole of the earth
that lonely moment at the top
that moment of vision
which, when afterwards lying
as if ill upon the ground
he must struggle to recapture
crawling across the ashes
and the flinty stones
seeking his pen and paper
feverish
bleeding
sweaty
cumstained
mucousy
stale
spent
livid
dizzy
foul-smelling
half-broke
magnificent!
The call has been answered
The choice has be made
Arrogant yet humble
Something has been created
from nothing
A small fragile empire of words
The moment has been seized
Waiting scorned
For now, here, in this moment
Scattering corpses like so
many dead words
The tail of the tiger gripped
like an inkpen
Emptiness has been erased
The stillness made vibrant in a flurry
of motion
The loneliness, so loud
and yet so quick it has been mollified
But then, as the poem runs its
course
As the clay has taken form
So that the only thing left to do
is to smash it into a pancake
And give it as a gift
to befuddled earthlings
As that great consummation signals
the end
Like the orgasm a climax which not
only preceded another stillness but
is at its minute peak the very
essence of death
so too answering the call is the
signal to descend
so that we are ever trying to
recapture that original instance
of recognition
That spark of vitality
Which so briefly illumines all
before dying
Dire straits
or not so dire
but to me
everything has become dire
tiles cracked
bed a cumbersome sore
my back disgusts even me
my dreams a constant plague of anxiety
deep forests for a stage
strange shafts
new and metallic
fluorescents
thru which water-driven elevators
manoeuvre
small, hemmed in
artificial spaces
in which pathetic dramas are staged
oh give me a home
buffalo or not
it may be that dismal
months are to come
if even in my dreams
there is no respite
from the nameless terrors
that grip me
and the very readily named
trifles that threaten
to overwhelm me
I am making myself ill
I can sense that
Nervous wreck,
despondent
get with it, man
the monocled old boy
in the walrous moustache
who sits on my shoulder
urges
get with it, man
(before it gets you)
AND in the bottom
of my sack
a fresh pen
to deliver me from evil
an ink-filled tube
is my lord and my god
my good shepherd
and my devil
and in these theatrical
dreams
she appears with here vigilant
familiar
trapped
because I have released the
pressure valve which enabled
the means of her locomotion
I can see her in her cage
She is angry
and tells me she no longer wishes to
be together
!
(that is the mark that appears over my
head)
-- we have not been together
for a long time
There is a cloud
about me
dimming the
parallelogram
on the wall
of the trapezoid
Anton LaVey
has said this
figure is
conducive to
madness
and for all I
know he
may
be
right
I am feeling
a bit mad,
cyclical,
metallic,
done in
Who’d have thunk it?
The Redbook
The Blackbook
the same worn refrain
no solutions
no answers
The terror subsided
Panic has become
subdued
A little companion
I am kept on his leash
little ole goat foot
present
preposterous
imposterous
bantam
bantering
wildly rocking
shooting stars
reckless plaything
and this catalogue does not charm me
it harms me
sent reeling back into the void
to grope for a pleasing group of letters
will anybody see this?
that dolphin springing in the bathtub?
that bathtub I do not have
how is it
in dreams
I see things which have eluded me by day?
are anxieties denuded of their trivial quivering,
set naked before us on a parade ground
generals indifferent passing by
thinking, really,
of pussy
and broad asses
pressed against their crotches
tits gripped
hungrily from behind
as cocks plunge deep
into a warm wetness
the pleasured groans
of a mistress like the
voices of god at the creation?
Is all this fancy dress
these epaulets,
plumed helmets,
brass buttons,
shiny boots,
is all this a mask
of constrained desire?
Does it all boil
down to a general
weariness of masturbation?
I have sat in those
wreckless automobiles
that go from 0 to 60
quickly
depressed from cocaine aftershock
piloted by drunks
inappropriate motions
I would scorn both as
onlooker and hapless passenger
I half-hoped
the police would
arrive
but amazingly
they did not
and in a dream
as I took the fall for her
I decided I could not do it
take the fall for her friend as well
friends who helped take her away
so I relented to the police
and led them away
there is within me, then
the authoritarian vindictiveness
the need to tidy up the
loose ends of my soul
to put into order
to chastise and discipline
even as I pursue
disorder
dishevelment
and irresponsibility
What are the Red and the Black
anyway
besides the opposing ends of
the accountant’s spectrum
What is profit and debt?
What I gain and lose
in relationships
knowledge
“soul”
great abstracts, reduced all,
to the petty vocabulary
of the greedy
and he miserly
the exact opposite
of all I propose to be?
and intermittently,
revelations
and half-coloured,
scenes of joy
AND so now
I head off
with low expectations
(so better than,
to avoid disappointment)
into some new
terrain
I shall endeavour
to set down
the narrative truth
not the Truth of Truth
but the truth of
the tale
some slight embellishment perhaps
some humorous anecdotes
of my self-abasement
and maybe
just maybe
come up with some pearls
I will set them before
you
And hopefully not make swine of you
for I will relate it all
Not to GUIDE you
but to WARN you
Mordecai Adkins
25 July, 1902
Part 1 | Part 2
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