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early March, 2003

by Jim McCurry

say sheaths. Perhaps Narcissus.
I go to pick up my typewriter, the smell
of clean oil, it's raining,
a few intermittent drops
a Sidney Greenstreet
could walk between. Yesterday
I drove the Interstate to see
Beulah, in the Lutheran
rest home: "They're
driving me bananas."

What enigma--
dame, woman, babe,
lady, commuter, brave
shotgun rider
through yuck and carbon
monoxide -- Hanging her head
"like a dawg," she says,
out the window,
"like a dawg" on Peoria
antiquated on/off ramp

I slap-tap her
'tween spine
and shoulderblade:
"Luv ya, kid...."

Drive, she sd.

Go ahead, shake like a tuning fork
to the vibrato of a voice
whose agent may or may not blow
hot beauty to cool like glass
installation swinging over
a weedy, fishy Venice canal.
You have the facility; I've
lost control. The papyrus, the
pen, the press, the engine
(font characters : blood) inexorable,
my students bury my shoulds with
is and does and definitely will be,
our lights flashing
off and on, nightline maps,
nova without end, not
withstanding--entropy's
not all bad, this old Fudd for
one (au contraire, Bob Dole--)

Bananas, we drive
off the Interstate a few blocks.

Waltz with moon shadow,
not puking, across
dry crackling leaves
to the door thinking
it's life and life only--I'm
alive, alive,
I ask foolish questions.

Like a gargoyle, a stone dog,
a pyramid glyph, a
walleyed gryphon--

"Yes. Of course."

She laughs. Tinkerbell,
without a sound.

Stupider than the gladiola,
redder than rhubarb,
turgid with objectless passion--

i took her to the facility.

Rain has stopped.
A badger scuttles across wet asphalt.

I drop Beulah off.
She rings for the buzz
that unlocks
the antiseptic stench.

The facility.

The care guardian.
I can drive home.

Spring break.

Since I left
my driveway--
I ask--Which
appearances "have" being
or non-being?

The jonquils?
Have they the nerve
to pop out? Bare buds?

Telling the faint green
from the green.
Faintly yellow.

I do not say sheaths.

maybe narcissus.

bio

jim mc curry, b. 10-3-43 in hawthorne (los angeles) california,
has taught at carl sandburg college since 1980, in poetry & philosophy;
since recently going online, his links include Big City Lit, Cyber Oasis,
Drought, and Snow Monkey—ten poems in all, four of which now
appear at the websites of the first two zines just named.
His philosophical interests center on nonduality: especially maha ati,
dzogchen, or madhyamika. (David Loy's recent study, NONDUALITY,
is a convenient handle.) For example, "the man" includes Huang-po, Yun-men, Dogen. The trouble with What Is Enlightenment is the
dubious assumption that we can think our way to enlightenment,
or that there is truly conscious evolution, 'progress,' rather than
recovery of primordial innocence/happiness. In this respect, contrary to some of his best friends, actually, Jim is somewhat skeptical of Andrew Cohen's work, and Ken Wilbur's—not to say the work of Eckhart Tolle, let's say. The literary interests include V. Woolf, B. Cendrars, Lydia Davis, Knut Hamsun, Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Casares and Borges, Marquez, Neruda, William Carlos Williams, Jack Collom. I think that's enough indication. O yes, Pessoa.
Jim has a granfalloon of masks, some of whom are becoming
heteronyms, mebbe: Baron Axel Angst, Ramadooly Foofoo, H. Pumphrey Smogrove, and the most fully realized of all, Dogwag Bummerstead, PhD, aka Old Dog.

email: jmccurry@csc.cc.il.us

connections

"ESP"
"Ship of State"
"On What is Proper"
"Moxie"
"Wit"
"I've got logic class, but so what?"
"Scattered Elegy/Eulogy for Philip Whalen"
"CODA"
"Female Bodhisattva"
"Je Ne Sais Quoi"