Myth of Arrival

Ill fate or just unlucky or just the dead with all their tacky clothes and loud music? I was reading Anne Sexton today and found these lines in her poemThe Truth the Dead Know which seemed a rather lot when you get down to it what their their odd habits and bad odors and using their cellphones all the time to call who and whatnot:

And what of the dead? They lie without shoes
in the stone boats. They are more like stone
than the sea would be if it stopped. They refuse
to be blessed, throat, eye and knucklebone.

Why worry about the dead and their feet and their strange fruit foods? Blue plums and red cherries. Who worries about the dead's food when we spend 90% of our waking time worrying about the past? My past is very interesting too and they say worrying does not help but it does buzz and buzz in my ears all day long. Or perhaps it is desire? I have never conquered desire but I have conquered the need to have a past … perhaps …perhaps. Or at least the need to talk about it happy on the telephone.

For once I won't look back; tell you stories
about what the dead eat in the under
world, how the cold milk from Persephone's
breasts might have tasted had you been there. Were
my past a song of jade, I would forget
it. Like that. Instead, my friend, let me tell
you of the future. A real alphabet
secret, stone dream. I will meet you in hell
once the boat lands and take you by the hand.
There. Live on that knowledge; mix it with salt
and sweet honey. Friend, do not look behind.
You can't eat the past. Only the dead's bland
food can do that. Eat what's to come, colbalt
on the tongue. Eat its seed and its sour rind.

One of the curious things about Great White Sharks is their habit of searching for boats. Like a cat exploring a new object they rub their blunt noses around the rudder and keel and then raise themselves horizontal, bringing their entire heads out of the water. The Great White will then remain in this position for some time. Some scientists believe this is a method for the shark to see what is about them, since their eye sight is rather poor. However, if you reach out and rub your hand across their snout a very interesting thing will happen. The shark will roll slowly back into the water, in a stupor-like state. The shark does not seem to mind this, in fact in it is reported in The Great White Shark (1991) by Richard Ellis and John McCosker that one went back several times to have its nose rubbed. This behavior is centered around the shark's navigational system, which is found:

in clusters of pores scattered around the shark's head … inside these pores are small cells, called ampullae of Lorenzini, which are filled with a gel-like substance that can conduct electricity. Each cell also has a tiny hair within it. When a charge goes through the gel, it also passes through the hair, which triggers a sensory signal … [however] a gentle hand on the snout is enough to overwhelm the shark's powerful electro-receptors and send it into a momentary coma-like state …

This fascinates me. We know hardly anything about these animals and yet within our lifetime they will disappear from our oceans forever. We know that Great Whites mate for life. They have such small litters of pups (1 or 2 in a five year span) there is no way they can build back their populations. Also, I found out, they migrate; crossing the oceans as the seasons change. The more I study them the more their behavior reminds me of my own cat. However, pollution and sport and long line fishing have wiped out many of the larger shark populations around the world. Pablo Neruda says one of the obligations of being a poet is to:

ceaselessly … listen to and keep
the sea's lamenting in [our] awareness …
[we] must feel the crash of the hard water
and gather it up in a perpetual cup
so that, wherever those in prison may be,
wherever they suffer the autumn's castigation…
through me, freedom and the sea
will make their answer to the shuttered heart."

And since the sea is the greatest teacher of them all and everything that lives in its waters are like saints; so, I believe, to hunt some of the oldest animals on earth until there are none left is a crime. A terrible crime that will come back to haunt us, just as all the crimes we have committed against this planet have come back with a fury.

she

This is about the eyes. There
is a certain sorrow. There
is something sorrowful
in those dull lids and
the rough snout rising
out of that immense green
darkness, answering
your call. “Darkling,

I listen,” Keats wrote.
We all want to make out
like thieves anyway; be
at last somebody's
muse and make away
just like highway bandits.
But how? when we won't

even stretch out our arm
and rub the regal stormy nose?
Can you hear that? Why else
would she be there for us?
Those yawning jaws
grant a quick glance
into our abandon and
those eyes know all about
abandonment. Let go

of the salt on your tongue.
Reach out; stroke that
spirit so close to the boat
you can hear her breathing.
And suddenly you know

the obvious answer
reflected back in
that spirit,
little darkling,
reflected back to you
because you listened.

I have been thinking in the last hour or so about the strange interest some poets have about bullets (the pointy sharp killing thing, not the black dots on the edge of certain lists) and how there is certain macho posturing I tend to tisk-tisk (usually the "I'm such a Don Juan" type) and then there are other posturing just as blatantly bravado that I never even think about, such as this bizarre addressing the bullet as the modern-day angel of death.

Today I am thinking of the book "Here, Bullet" by Brian Turner, a Iraqi vet who won some big poetry prize last year for his war poems. I read them because I have been having a hard time writing about my Peace Corps experiences and I am curious what other poets who write about the horrors of suffering have done to capture that. I wasn't in a war, but post-traumatic stress disorders don't actually care who it strikes. The Pottawatomie poet Larry Mitchell (who I blogged about in a earlier post) writes successfully about his war experiences in ways that both recognize the pain he went through but also raises it to the level of art.

But getting back to this reoccurring theme why do poets write odes to the Bullet and take on a almost death-wish in their poetry? Taunting the Bullet to strike them down? Here is Turner's poem to show you what I mean:

If a body is what you want,
Then here is bone and gristle and flesh.
Here is the clavicle-snapped wish,
The aorta’s opened valves, the leap
Thought makes at the synaptic gap.
Here is the adrenaline rush you crave,
That inexorable flight, that insane puncture
Into heat and blood. And I dare you to finish
What you’ve started. Because here, Bullet,
Here is where I complete the word you bring
hissing through the air, here is where I moan
the barrel’s cold esophagus, triggering
my tongue’s explosives for the rifling I have
inside of me, each twist of the round
spun deeper, because here, Bullet,
here is where the world ends, every time.

I wonder if this is a conceit? I mean, we in this culture give a lot of stress on "authentic" appearance over voice. If you have the clothing versus credentials you can still say anything … even if you don't live it (thus the explanation of how particular rappers who live in mansions and can afford to buy certain third-world nations can speak about how hard life is in the ghetto). Part of this question is addressed to me because about five months ago out of frustration over a crisis on the news (UN Peace Keepers sexually forcing girls they were supposedly protecting) I sat down and thought what the most radical way of dealing with it would be. My mind usually doesn't turn to violence as a deterrent but I decided to go with the idea anyway and found myself addressing my own Bullet. I call on the Greek goddess Athena as well. What is interesting about her (to me) was that unlike her brother Apollo who was god of music and the sun (and his dark brother Dionysus with his ecstasy and madness), Athena was the goddess of war and poetry. In this day and age we don't say war and poetry in the same breath, usually. Again, is this bravado on my part? I do not know.

"anger is an energy" — Public Image Ltd.

This is urgent. This poetic justice
concealed in the long gun's long chamber.
I'll turn to you since poetic chorus
rarely makes good Peace Keepers. This anger
turns us passive witness. Always after
our wars do we even hear a poet
condemn our bloodshed; a general slur
against violence. But this poem? I cut
it on a bullet and put the bullet
in the chamber; it's a rhyme against bad
behavior. Now, goddess of the sonnet
and the bullet, Athena of the mad
blood, speak through this poetic deterrent.
Help me cock this gun. This is urgent.

Of course it takes a special talent to pull off a really brilliant mediation on the Bullet and Rita Dove does it superbly. I heard her read her poem out loud at the Dodge Festival two years ago and it blew the top of my head off. I think it also got me thinking about the strange relationship these voices have with this hunk of lead that only takes lives. It's a long poem so I only include the last two stanzas. They are worth the price of admission alone. The Poet. The Bullet. The Voice.

from "Meditation at fifty yards , moving target"

…

(Question: If you were being pursued,
how would you prefer to go down—
ripped through a blanket of fire
or plucked by one incandescent
fingertip?)

The Bullet.

dark dark no wind no heaven
i am not anything not borne on air i bear
myself i can slice the air no wind
can hold me let me let me
go i can see yes
o aperture o light let me off
go off straight is my verb straight
my glory road yes now i can feel
it the light i am flame velocity o
beautiful body i am coming i am yours
before you know it
i am home