Distance brings proportion. From here
the populated tiers
as much as players seem part of the show:
a constructed stage beast, three folds of Dante's rose,
or a Chinese military hat
cunningly chased with bodies.
"Falling from his chariot, a drunk man in unhurt
because his soul is intact. Not knowing his fall,
he is unastonished, his is invulnerable."
So, too, the "pure man"- "pure"
in the sense of undisturbed water.
"It is not necessary to seek out
a wasteland, swamp, or thicket."
The opposing pitcher's pertinent hesitations,
the sky, this meadow, Mantle's thick baked neck,
the old men who in the changing rosters see
a personal mutability,
green slats, wet stone are all to me
as when an emperor commands
a performance with a gesture of his eyes.
"No king on his throne has the joy of the dead,"
the skull told Chuang-tzu.
the thought of death is peppermint to you
when games begin with patriotic song
and a democratic sun beats broadly down.
The Inner Journey seems unjudgeably long
when small boys purchase cups of ice
and, distant as a paradise,
experts, passionate and deft,
hold motionless while Berra files to left.
-John Updike
Fellatio
How beautiful to think
that each of these clean secretaries
at night, to please her lover, takes
a fountain into her mouth
and lets her insides, drenched in seed,
flower into landscapes:
meadows sprinkled with baby's breath,
hoarse twiggy woods, birds dipping, a multitude
of skies containing clouds, plowed earth stinking
of its upturned humus, and small farms each
with a silver silo.
-John Updike
that each of these clean secretaries
at night, to please her lover, takes
a fountain into her mouth
and lets her insides, drenched in seed,
flower into landscapes:
meadows sprinkled with baby's breath,
hoarse twiggy woods, birds dipping, a multitude
of skies containing clouds, plowed earth stinking
of its upturned humus, and small farms each
with a silver silo.
-John Updike
goodbye john updike
so this guy dies
same story
and I think of all
the books he wrote
the iconography of literati
and the poetry that was given to me
by my mother
she of offerings aplenty
and probably most importantly
it forces my own scrawlings
into not just perspective but negation
not the imbument of essence
but the tracing or etching
so as to be clean
I want to conquer
her fear
because she won't
and there's nothing I want for myself
and somethings happen and others don't
flip, rabbit, flip
-Robert Lescatre
-photo: JG
