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READING 8/10/10 7:30pm Bookshop Santa Cruz
Tim Fitzmaurice
Poodle dressed in his tightest tee and his shortest shorts
& stood with cradled clipboard in front of Starbucks
mingling with the aging hogsters and other exhibivalents.
flashes a winning smile and he speaks: Have you got one minute
to save the whole flucking animal kingdom?
How could anyone say no to that?
They taught Poodle this pitch at the POODLEPEACE
marketing school for summer interns in Daly City,
where as they say: We can get you to yessiree!
Actually they did not use the word flucking
in the course on sidewalk counseling and outreach.
Poodle added the word himself as his personal attempt
at rhetorical intensification and just that dollop
of edgy intimidation.
Well plenty tumbled. It was worth the drive
from Daly City to the City that never said No.
Only the evil could say no to anything.
But if he got a squirmer, Poodle could be crazy cruel
and play them like a brook trout.
Do you have a minute for the beasts?
Do you have any friends who are beasts?
Can I be your friend?
You don’t have a minute to make a friend?
Or is it you don’t have a minute to make a poodle friend?
Have you done anything for anybody today other than yourself?
Oh you have?
Then I guess that poodles don’t qualify for your good heartedness.
Even the slightest hint that he had gotten into their heads and
into their nightmares could be as good as a sale.
People would cross the street and go to the Coffee Roasting Company
instead of Starbucks
and so Poodle had to mosey
down to the space in front of Urban Outfitters,
next to where the cinema line would queue up.
He always chose the coziest sidewalks
or the tight squeezes.
[Hand out the poem machines. For applauding.]
Poodle: an explanation
In the 1960’s I read Goethe’s Faust to my son, Jason, when he was two weeks old. It was edited by Stephen Spender and translated by Louis MacNiece. Wagner is talking to Faust. Faust sees something in the stubble and corn and Wagner says that it is just a poodle. But Faust says: But don’t you perceive how in wide spirals around us he is running, fire eddies behind him in his wakes? And Wagner replies: I can see nothing but a black poodle. So is he the devil or just a poodle? Well since then I have written many poems using Poodle as my eyes and ears and paws because he can go places that I cannot go.
A first poem
Defining Poodle (1969)
A poodle is not an act of god.
A poodle is a symptom
of advanced education,
a highly developed
artistic temperament,
an unusual interest
in the accidents of breeding,
and too much time on your hands.
4.
Poodle goes to the avenue each day
to see whose missing
Some are present:
Pinnochio the registered sex offender. & balloon man,
tarot man, empathy man, taco bell boy, saxety yak,
Long legged short shorts blonde man who keeps his head down at the margins,
The maestro who with his boom box tucked under his arm
plays tapes of his endless piano etudes to the unsuspecting and uncomprehending.
Our friend, the polite Vince, who loves to boogie
while standing in doorways. He listens to his walkman
in doorways wearing the new clothes that his parents give him
once a year when he goes to the east coast I think on vacation
from his schizophrenia. We trade ten dollars
about once a month. He always pays me back
about once a month. He always pays me back
even when he doesn’t owe me anything.
Or Paul with his trout post cards,
who fell down last year and almost did not get up
High-five woman who works the crew. She gave me a book
that she wrote last week which said APPY BOOEK on every page.
& scarves lady who preaches to the unsaved and spanges the rest
and who is not cosmic lady or the lady with scarves
who danced outside while Warmth played in front
of the Cooperhouse. Then everything changed.
Tbat building refused to be demolished without a fight.
The youthful and enthusiastic soilies, is it? The new tribes who play gypsy music
and live in magic buses and who have pushed the less charming old men and women to the side streets and in the bushes next to the library. The brutal aisles of the downtown are thick with jealousies & rivalries & heartbreak. The old envelopes are no longer entertaining. These deead letters, their addresses have all been obliterated.
But I see some of the disappeared
Of course the obvious California Slim and sawplayer Tom. But
I would like to point out a special case
Ra, The Sun God, but how can you point to a negative.
He was absent when he was present. Then he was erased.
In a nutshell: he was thrown
from the Water Sreet Bridge and killed
maybe twenty-five years ago?
The person or persons were male or female and
between the ages of1 and 100. I believe
they are still at large. So if you see them,
please call the local authorities.
Ra was the one—do you remember?—
who stood on bridges or in streets with his head
tilted back and his face to the sun and he stared
with the beatific abandon of St Teresa of Avila
whilst she lingered in the vise-like grip of her spiritual wedding.
His skin become the color of a French roast
Tres Americas coffee bean but edged in gold
with patches of a permanent blush.
Then one day he was thrown away.
6. Poodle learns that Power corrupts
and obnoxious power corrupts
obnoxilutely
How many fat asses can you fit into a mediocre mind?
asked nostradamus.
So poodle could see that all hell could --
well you know the rest..
So Poodle tried to give advice
at a perfectly ordinary picnic table.
So yes he told Nostramemus the burgomeister:
Don’t do what you imagine and
don’t imagine what you do!
No one will even mention the quicksand
until you can taste the grit in your mouth.
They will gladly finish your sentences and deliver
whatever poison you wish for with ribbons and gladness.
If you fall down they will say you are leaping.
If you crawl in the mud they will say it is dancing.
The swankness you swank will be swanked upon you.
just like your nostramomma told you.
But he fell like adam upon eve and grew somber.
Fortunately he was saved by the inclemency of the arrow that flies by day
so he shouted like Houdini
drop the tray
and I will strop the stray
and the terror that flies by night and
the arrow that flies by day.
We shall tattoo this upon every mother’s heart in Live Oak
and it will announce my resurrection to terms everlasting.
for
What is a hero if it isn’t the me
who eats shit
and shits policy.
7.
Poodle Pissed upon Eleven palm trees
on Mission Hill
in order of height:
no easy feat!
Not including the baby palms just sprouting and too tender
for his unction or the palm tree locked behind the cloister wall
of the home for unwed mothers,
from where he has never heard singing,
but yes thoughtlessly upon the rectory
but not upon the church itself,
which would have been at least blasphemy and
probably a violation of the muni code.
& he passed the crumbling graves overlooking
the hardware store covered in quaking grass and thistles
He could not add even an exclamation point
to the desecration of it.
But you cannot hold it against a dog for not holding it
& pissing.
Pissing for dogs is conversation. My language.
It is a series of assertions
of a fact, agreement, contradiction,
ejaculation or condolence. Just as smelling listens.
Every thing speaks to them. Things shouting at them.
We cannot know what contrariness and annoyances
they deal with. Poodle can tell you:
When dogs are in government,
there’s a whole lot of sniffing and pissing going on.
Poodle Waiting for the truth of Mozart
K283 PC
For two years I’ve listened
and heard nothing,
like Frank Drake eavesdropping
on the death of god,
or the Grant’s patiently tagging finches
on Galapagos for twenty generations.
For two years I have just listened
and waited as if this thing
will walk through this door
if only I leave it open long enough.
I wonder if I am so
irresistible that such gifts must come.
But it is obvious
that most live behind doors
upon which no one
ever knocks.
Poodle & the Magician’s Last Trick
His darkening eyes hold
the distraction of it all
in their slim pools.
Loch Ness monsters could live
undiscovered
in the deep retinas
& sleep
& only wake to feed.
It’s possible there’s enough magic
left in this wand
to manage this last trick.
Where is the suit
with the pockets
in which the white birds live?
14
Now that they allowed our four-pawed pals
to trot downtown,
he could see the army of souls who have been
chosen to be there.
The diabetes man and his need-food sign, &
the man in the wheel chair
clutching a blanket between his teeth
and flying down the bike lane &
The Burrito man.
You know the bass-singing, one-note-playing,
guitar-plucking, cowboy-hatted blues man
who sings only one song:
AHHHHHHHHHHHH! I aint got no doughghghgh
to get a burritoooooooo! AHHHHHHHHHHH!
Have you noticed?
No “Homeless & Pregnant” signs this year!
And then there’s David
who once slept under parked cars
until they took his leg away.
Then they moved him to Pleasantville somewhere in Live Oak,
which might as well be Sweden.
but David still gets on the bus,
comes downtown, never speaks, no schtick at all,
only sitting in his wheel chair to cadge dollars
with a hand-lettered cardboard sign.
Poodle had to hate a world where
losing a leg was the best financial move
he had made
in his whole life.
12.
Poodle and the twilight of the gods
for Nobby
So to visit the gods
Poodle always trotted over to Sunshine Villa
in the Psycho house on Beach hill
where Dionysus was locked up
inside of a room which was locked up
inside of a room which was buried
under the ground
with windows that only looked out
upon the dirt.
He was the professor of Love and Shit,
so he was much admired in the poodle community.
Many watched the Gotterdammerung as he plummeted
into history.
So many thought that the fall of Bockus was unspeakable.
They could not stand to watch
as he happily plummeted into soft food and silences.
It was not the silence but the smacking of his lips
that embarrassed them.
We are all happy to feel our friend’s requisite shame
After all genius consists of more than a tweed suit.
No surprise that very few could watch this fall from
gracefulness.
Poodle likewise never wanted to see his father’s
nakedness. But he endeavored to break the lock
and to enter in.
Poodle brought some gooey meta s’mores
by Ovid from S’Logos &
the professor of wine and exposes was
unspeakably hungry.
So here Poodle sat &
thought something about happiness
but what?
All the previous tenses are swept away &
here it is: the lovely body:
Nothing more than
little boy
on a dolphin.
PASSPORT
Swimming in your eyes I
am in two worlds.
Outside your eyes,
my hands are orphans.
My every smile
a supplication,
wishing for 20 dollars
from estranged American parents
on their mastercard.
Do you see the deer children
coming down thoughtlessly
attracted to the green?
What can I say?
Your soul
is my last country,
and I have burned my passport.
Dances
Tango: Keep your eyes
a poem of erotic love and frustration
Keep your eyes! I can’t use them
anymore. Everything in this world
is finally visible to me. No secrets.
No drums at a distance.
No having seen.
Mein gott ich liebe dich zo
Her ring and some lips.
The nesting of oranges in morning
sunlight:
So are they strangers, strange
as frozen pebbles of rain.
They hit my window.
They hope to become invisible
in the warm room. Her lips
and eyes and some rings.
Mein gott ich liebe dich zo
You are the always other one of my dreams
the woman who walks past me in the street
\a pickpocket and perfect explainer.
I am sick of your explanations and
smirkings.
I want you
to not be walking past me when I am
walking.
Mein gott ich liebe dich zo
Have you seen the streets flooded with mystics
with exaltation, with grief?
They are holding hands with so many
dead. They take air like a narcotic.
They are waiting to see oif the experiment
failed
or whether—
I’m squawking about it because
it is your problem!
Mein gott ich liebe dich zo
A Dialogue (1985)
on a woman who died of anorexia
When will the sleeping margarets wake
and walk among us once again?
When we have made a gentle place
where women walk with loving men.
But the world I see is green with joy,
and if you try you can be free.
I know there are not margarets there.
I cannot see what you can see.
This is the garden my fatrher grew.
I’ve donme my best to make it flower.
If no Margaret lives beyond an hour,
then I guess this place will not do.
Well, what can we do to make it new,
to makle the sleeping margarets wake?
We’ll have to tear it up again
for every single margarets sake.
MAMBO: Hija del Volcan (after Neruda)
written on the occasion of the death
of a Merrill student & activist, Sandra Frausto
“estando ya mi casa sosegada” (Juan de la Cruz)
“En la perdida misma los olivios encuentro” (Sor Juana)
1.
Nothing quieter
than the chaos and clamor of a ship at the edge
of the horizon, almost invisible, almost lost,
our daughter hear us,
our daughter of the volcano
Alleviation:
en la perdida misma
los alivios encuentro,
our daughter hear us,
our daughter of grace and freedom.
My convict, impeccable wind.
La misma muerte vivo
es la vida con que muero. (Sot Juana)
Northing farther
by far than casa sosegada
almost invisible, almost lost,
Our daughter hear us
our daughter of instrumentality.
2.
“at the hand of my
dying in wanting
at the hand of my
murdering in loving
at the hand of my
nourishing in poisoning
Would you believe it?
the dying I live
is
the living I die.
Would you believe it?”
--Sor Juana Divine Love
3.
Where will we find it?
Point if you can.
Gesture.
In the terror of your island heart?
In the peace of your starry hand?
Those moments are carefully carved
like your individual teeth.
Her orchestras of hope are silent.
But waiting for that slim baton.
Where will we find her?
Our daughter of the volcano?
In the thrashing of her eyelashes?
In the heat of her last glance?
Those separate breaths are multitudes,
an army of sighing.
Who escapes? Nuestra
hija del
volcan?
In the tender kiss of politics?
In the silence of that distant ship?
Nothing sadder than a single glove,
sleeping in the chair.
My orchestras of hope are silent,
but waiting for the slim baton.
Did you know the world is dangerous?
Our stone?
In the fire that burns my fugitive tongue?
In this wasted secret:
casa uno es el otro”
one pulled thread
is our unraveling.
Who has sucked the air from this room?
Who has frozen the summerlight?
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