Wednesday, November 23, 2022

why am I doing this? Failure - Rest in Power, Bernadette Mayer

FAILURES IN INFINITIVES

Bernadette Mayer

why am i doing this? Failure
to keep my work in order so as
to be able to find things
to paint the house
to earn enough money to live on
to reorganize the house so as
to be able to paint the house &
to be able to find things and
earn enough money so as
to be able to put books together
to publish works and books
to have time
to answer mail & phone calls
to wash the windows
to make the kitchen better to work in
to have the money to buy a simple radio
to listen to while working in the kitchen
to know enough to do grownups work in the world
to transcend my attitude
to an enforced poverty
to be able to expect my checks
to arrive on time in the mail
to not always expect that they will not
to forget my mother's attitudes on humility or
to continue
to assume them without suffering
to forget how my mother taunted my father
about money, my sister about i cant say it
failure to forget mother and father enough
to be older, to forget them
to forget my obsessive uncle
to remember them some other way
to remember their bigotry accurately
to cease to dream about lions which always is
to dream about them, I put my hand in the lion's mouth
to assuage its anger, this is not a failure
to notice that's how they were; failure
to repot the plants
to be neat
to create & maintain clear surfaces
to let a couch or a chair be a place for sitting down
and not a table
to let a table be a place for eating & not a desk
to listen to more popular music
to learn the lyrics
to not need money so as
to be able to write all the time
to not have to pay rent, con ed or telephone bills
to forget parents' and uncle's early deaths so as
to be free of expecting care; failure
to love objects
to find them valuable in any way; failure
to preserve objects
to buy them and
to now let them fall by the wayside; failure
to think of poems as objects
to think of the body as an object; failure
to believe; failure
to know nothing; failure
to know everything; failure
to remember how to spell failure; failure
to believe the dictionary & that there is anything
to teach; failure
to teach properly; failure
to believe in teaching
to just think that everybody knows everything
which is not my failure; I know everyone does; failure
to see not everyone believes this knowing and
to think we cannot last till the success of knowing
to wash all the dishes only takes ten minutes
to write a thousand poems in an hour
to do an epic, open the unwashed window
to let in you know who and
to spirit thoughts and poems away from concerns
to just let us know, we will
to paint your ceilings & walls for free

I AM PROACTIVE EPHEMERAL EPIPHYTIC RESIDUE

Bernadette Mayer

I don't mean to get all
Parallel universe on you
But I am at once the spider
The spider web, and
Me observing them


*

TO A POLITICIAN

Bernadette Mayer

Your penis is homeless 
You are covered with as many warts as the lies you’ve told
You pat maggots on their backs
Your syphilitic mouth sucks the slugs from the irradiated cocks of your cohorts
This gives a bad name to syphilis, if I mention it in relation to you 
Your asshole farts from overeating of civilian causalities 
The toxic fingernails of your leprous hands 
Flip through the reports of your medievally botulistic bubonic policies 
Your brain is full of lice, tickling it with greed for pesticide-ish powder
Cockroaches fill your pancreas with their eggs
But this is an insult to cockroaches 
Your lungs fill with the blood of the dead 
Poisonous snakes of freedom crawl into your every orifice, but to no avail 
Spiders come out of your nose 
Your heart is being pinched by Lyme-diseased tics, stung by killer bees, bitten by the rattlesnakes of prevarication 
First thing every morning your gangrenous arms embrace the rabid turds of your generals 
Your penis is the size of a junkie’s needle 
Your nostrils resemble the assholes of cops
It seems to us you convert your farts into speeches
Your disease-ridden mouth is full of the incurable sores of your lies 
Your petrified eyes eat the bulimic vomit of your violent words 
All words, all humans, insulted, disgusted, by your depraved existence. 

*

15 TIMES

Bernadette Mayer

Maybe when time was and made me the time
many times could we and in time when the time came
noticed that and gave you the time of and left him the
left it open for any time and got back on time and how
the time he and served out the time and never noticed
covered up that time and said we'd see some time and kept
what time and asked for the time of and covered
we knew just what kind of time could be had


*

WATCHING THE COMPLEX TRAIN-TRACK CHANGES

Bernadette Mayer

To Men

You put on an ornate ballgown
You say “someone has to do it”
You take me to where you work,
The inside of a pyramid with chasms,
Watching the complex train-track changes
Products and objects make love to my father
Two babies are born—Bruno and Daisy
You take your shirt off looking boylike & lovely
You get on the plane, both clown & wizard
And then get off in a comedy of manners
Our dates become a comedy of dinners
Your name rhymes with clothes
Your plane folds & flies away
Without us, I’ll make the next one
We are enclosed in spaceless epics by breathless bricks
& still we’ll meet like runes or the leashes for hawks
Let’s go! Can we stay? Go to sleep.
A tree wouldn’t talk or weep if I-forget-what
And you in the train’s opulent rooms
Switch your cock to a baby and then say
“Must there (not) be a law against this?”
You add, “I have been thinking of you in my head”
You wear green glitter on your shirt instead of
A tie, that’s how I recognize you as you
You are the prep cook the sous-chef you make
Duplicating potato salad like the loaves & fishes
You create gorgeous paper-like sculptures of foods
We go down in the car through threatening snows
To arrive in a second to eat in a renovated place
You and I tell “what” we are at the end of a movie
Our podium of soft loud feet flies by accident
I take the train to your house to hear Shakespeare & Verdi
Everyone applauds when you walk in. The director
Holds up each actor & describes his physical being
I talk to your father but only by telephone
You have the royal blue 8 � x 11 notebook with the lock on it
I want one but you say you cant get them anymore
I walk twice through that city I’ve been in before
All through its rooms, its streets and its Commons

*

TOMORROW

Bernadette Mayer

tomorrow we'll see the lightbulb in schenectady,
go to gems farms in schodack, then on to howe caverns,
then to see the wayne thiebaud show at the clark
where we'll stop to notice the melting ice sculpture
then excellent spinach sap soup at the thai restaurant
in williamstown, a brief stop at the octagonal museum,
on to northampton to see the smith college art museum
& greenhouse where we'll see a green heron

it would be nice to be able to walk today
so we could go to opus 40 in saugerties
followed by a dinner of oysters & mussels at the bear
then on to check out the sheep at the sheepherding inn
where we're able to buy riccotta cheese
which means twice-baked, with which we're able
to make a pizza with fresh figs gotten from the berry farm
                           war what is it good for?
                           absolutely nothing

1 comment:

  1. Opus 40 is a large environmental sculpture in Saugerties, New York, created by sculptor and quarryman Harvey Fite (1903—1976). It comprises a sprawling series of dry-stone ramps, pedestals and platforms covering 6.5 acres (2.6 ha) of a bluestone quarry.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opus_40



    the sheepherding inn

    photo at https://ruralintelligence.com/real-estate/inn-opportunity

    ReplyDelete