Moxie
First of all, I like this
[says my email pen pal, K
And I tend to I agree]:
I guess I'm beginning
to accept the idea of
trimming down my voices
to the ones I like, and
I guess I'm beginning
to accept the idea of
trimming down my voices
to the ones I like, and
this one is insufferable:
obnoxious in / for words.
But here it is anyhow.
this one is insufferable:
Here’s two legendary old men—
here’s to Dad, whichever or both--
provenance of mythic sperm, mythic donor
in 1943. Counting backwards
from October, nine months, give or take,
we get a rumor of conception
on January 3—and I do so count, barely
distracted
by Romare Bearden calendar prints such as
SHOW TIME, 1974 : Collage with acrylic and lacquer
on board, 50 x 40 in.
What I’ve learned recently from Old Dog’s
Mom: The first Popeye disappeared
in the War. Then his
dogGone dad married Mom—to fill in,
In the spare room, on the cot.
Which one had the drinking problem?
(page change)
Dad 1 or Dad 2 ? Which one took
the photos
in the Tetons?
Cubbie bear?
________________
I invent that Dad swam out toward Catalina
just after or before Pearl Harbor
having heard of an inoperable tumor
somewhere beneath the breast bone
between heart and lung, Cast his fate
to the deep.
Hey -- in absence of reports,
the makeshift
story
will just have
to do.
_________________
I despair, je ne sais quoi, knowing unknowing
of what? Atonement
with despair?
Voice of Dad 1,
Dad 2
Voice wraithed by smoke rings
From misty past enquires, -- Lucky Strikes? --
-- What “I,” chum?
And if “what I ?” --
then what despair?
Oh, it’s insufferable,
surely, but I have a theory: the bald old guy
I saw hitching through Salt Lake (where Dad 2,
I guess, was a desk clerk, the death certificate
Said in ‘63] was Dad’s Irish Yiddish Chinese
Ghost. Sort of a mongrel cross between
Popeye and Henry Miller, but not
Politically incorrect. Beyond the pale
Of what you say, correct, in-
Correct, obnoxiously free------------"
And did you know, dear invisible friend,
that Phil Silvers wrote Nancy
for Frank Sinatra’s daughter? I don’t
have the date. Paul Desmond
Recorded it on June 14, 1963.
v
M O X I E
for Diane Wakoski
The wait-person has
that Dietrich
half-glance and slouch
down cold. Coil’d.
Ironic deferential.
Suicide is tacky,
And so is a faculty hog roast.
Moxie
was a soft drink,
1925-1930.
What became of moxie?
Fiery rains, catalytic
converters, monstrous
dew grunt & moan.
Thy furred cusps of
overlapping steelgray pregnancies.
Zapping—-sparking--shorting out.
Allergic to what one needs
(contentment of slaves)
he blames the masters above,
floating in babyclouds
of blue Iowa sun.
The blues wif fronds,
he thinks,
Only in Davenport, Iowa.
_____________
Inaudible shimmer of snares.
There is no knowing the self
save one send out invitations.
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