-------------- Original message --------------
> Missile-aneus thoughts, Fred:
>
> U R a celestial body orbiting (that's the first thought)
>
> Hav U done a dialog pome?
>
> (hav just come in from the f-----g 4th o Jooly traffic OY they're on killer
> missions i wanna tell ya and all this to celebrate why we ain't Brits no mo!)
> which leads to next thought:
>
> Hav U tried to open a beer with your nose? (just askin)
>
> I wanna see a Fred pome that equates power with women
>
> and I don't want U, Fred, to abandon your character-narration pome form (at
> least not for the aforerequesteds)
>
> and, finally, watching firewerks from a sailboat is better than
> ---------------(mebbe this assignment's too easy)
>
> Judy the celestial body
>
Why would I open a bottle of beer with my nose? Other members, perhaps, but not the nose.
Some dialogue poems years back, but have no access to my files. Computer is on the blink. Am using a spare laptop from my wife's office.
Poems equating women and power? Well, I've been considering a sequence on Messalina, or maybe Catherine the Great. Here's one about A woman and integrity, which is something different:
ELLEN AVERY
The tourists have gone; I can't say
I'll miss their endless peering when,
bored with crabcakes and toffee
or having somehow lost their parking lot,
they roam briefly inland and pass
the grimy window of my studio.
If I painted the one view of the one beach,
like so many others, they'd ignore me;
but looking in, they wonder what
I'm doing ... What am I doing?
( - Remember how angry I was
fifty years ago, when Marya said
those first Pollocks I saw with her
would make a lovely chintz.
I'd be more tolerant now;
as would she, if she were alive and if
familiarity were tolerance.)
It's autumn, time to hang another piece
on the wall opposite the screens
on which dear Dr. Gilder hangs my x-rays,
take back last April's offering, dread
a bit more his retirement,
thrill like a girl when he marvels
how well I'm doing actually
(considering), and talk -
as if we were two grownups
mumbling over a child -
about poor Sarah, my survivor friend.
Who "should be in a home -
we relaly must confront that,"
says Doctor G., quite thoroughly confused
when I agree, sharply: "Yes, she should have a home."
(Instead of a room *chez a niece
who is pious and narrow and mean,
herself another piece
of driftwood washed here on a husband's tide
in contrast to my own careful docking.)
"I'll take you in, and we'll go down together,"
is what I say to Sarah when
we hobble among the tourists,
shying from their beliies
and their explosive and unhappy kids,
admiring the nearly naked young,
enjoying the usual view, the noisy gays.
It's hard for her to get lost, I tell the doctor:
the town is small, and anyway
most of her life, she says,
has been a grand though unaccountable
and possible pointless voyage;
a fading number tells her where she's from.
She'll take up no room -
which is good, for I have none;
especially now it's fall
and my other friends, who have hidden
all summer, come
at dusk to drink and argue while I cook.
All men, which means their various pains are tragic;
or at least glorious, like
their wealth, such as it is,
their politics or art, such as they were,
their late regretted wives.
I love them most, I think, when they mostly talk
to themselves: Douglas describing
a memorably rude tourist;
Howard a book, a traveler's account
of a strange old settlement
in Paraguay, where someone said
after the War, "At least we have made others suffer."
He wonders at that, ignored, shaking his head.
Of course they can be trying
when they begin to repeat themselves, or trail off.
Or when, despite my orders,
they attempt to help me clean.
These longer, quiet nights are also time
for letters. (Doug insists
he'll buy me a computer ...
I prefer his nagging and his tales
of endless information, fabulous ease.)
There are still surprisingly many
to write, and even some that will be answered;
though when I start without a salutation
I know that one's to me.
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