I'm overweight, creaky,
have brownish bags under my eyes,
just read five minutes of Carlos Williams
This is a world I've left
I haven't much good to say about it
(might I perhaps be denying the good times the good
to perversely justify the bad of these times?)
The Carlos Williams I have in my mind
is not really the doctor, it's rather
the good looking man on one of his
New Directions paperbacks,
a guy with a scout hat,
sort of like a Mounty of poetry
Really, not a poet
There's something to say for somebody who
delivered 2000 babies
And about me they (if they will ever bother)
might say: deliverer of thousands of lines
of infertile industrial prose(December 1996 / May 1999)
On thick walls a pattern of
light blue flowers, stems with
water ducts and angular ribs
Turquoise blue shores
will come drifting in
in long gulps -- go -- stop -- go
Breathing freely
Admitting the rising blue water
on the submerging walls(1981 / 2000)
To have a story is much
To have preserves is
Equally important for the
Rest of the world but
Most important is not to
Ever put lids on things
"Sabes," dijo mi madre,
"Las cosas go bad."(1981)
The keen sequel "the most out of life"
Gets you on a plane somewhere
Such a draft up you feel
The jumping of an inflatable plastic
pony with regular black dots on
its white fur between your legs
And subsequently "even more"
At least four thoughts and marks
Of memory: "It was like that"
You swim off like a slightly wet
Smoking cigar "to mostly green shores"(1981 / 2000)
For G. Heyer
When you asked me you didn't know
What to answer to such a question
As you had asked yourself and were
Unable to foresee what would happen
Next: that we shouldn't dance together
Nor any other thing "juntos" for now
Or -- shall we say -- everOr just imagine what you looked like!
Your hair an inch off order your
Freckled nose turned up -- you'd
Fain eat me with it -- your blue
Eyes still containing enough trust
Or just imagine! Since I am mute
Noone can blame me it all rests in
Gestures -- ineffably -- drownedYour mother's kitchen gave you
Comfort now you've grown out of it
You'd like everything to be a
Larger kitchen -- a bedroom just
Behind the door -- and can you
Really blame me for an obstruction?(1981 / 2000)
A drive by Wittershausen heath
Coming from Oberndorf in the Ulysse
the sheep scattered on the snow-spotted
bristly meadow over on the left quietly
fleetingly said „forlorn“ (Thomas Gray?).(1995 / 2000)
For the J.A.
What do I remember?
Fish head, barking out of
manila wrapping paper.
Called "Bark".What is legitimate in quotation?
In memory?
Do I need to run and verify?Smooth bark of beech,
deeply trenched of old ash.A conscious act? No, but one that
has been with me for years.(1996)
Even squinting I can't tell the titles on the shelf.
Nabokov because it's printed in large letters,
I can guess that's Lolita next to it because of the
lasciviously curled L, almost like the tongue on
the Rolling Stones' record label.Let's see how good my memory is after last night's
blues excess (an Italian band in Rottweil,
of all events! and Kilkenny in an "Irish" pub after-
wards). Chandler, let's take Chandler.The Little Sister.
The High Window (somber somehow, never my favorite).
The Big Sleep.
The Long Good-Bye (the longest one, too long, best
remembered for the gimlet somewhere on the first few
pages).The last one (last complete one) he wrote I had trouble
remembering.
The one they turned into a movie with Charlotte Rampling
and Robert Mitchum (really my favorite incorporation of
Marlowe).The last one is called Playback.
About some perturbed woman Marlowe actually makes love to,
Elizabeth? But very unreliable.
Poodle Springs. The one Parker finished. An appropriately awful title.
Now married to Mrs. - Loring?
Marlowe completely misses the track (and so has Parker).I'm still missing one.
Two!
The Lady in the Lake. Perhaps the best of them all.
What a movie this one could make
(there's one from the 40's that's so-so).Am I going to have to actually get up and look at
the shelf for the last one?The high-wattage Rudy Rotta blues band has done it to me.
Dr. Veringer is in it, and the none-too-intelligent giant,
and Velma ("I want my Velma"), and lush Mrs. ... ?
I am thinking hard. Mrs. Loring in Playback
started in The Long Good-Bye, the good neighborhood
drug-supplying doctor's wife.The story ends with a shoot-out on a boat.
Velma does the love-struck giant in. Farewell, My Lovely.I broke down, went into the bedroom and looked it up.
(1994, revised 1999)
All copyright © by J. Beilharz
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