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Uncle History’s cousin, Nostalgia
Calls him on the cephalopod telephone
(Its a sort of deep sea communication)
Anyway, cousin wants to know
When the old ways will be returning
Women doing mindless work
Men eating straight from trees
Etcetera etcetera
But Uncle’s answering service
Takes the call, says—
“Sorry we’re not at home,
We’re out somewhere
Looking for future nostalgias…”

Do you remember the Charles Addams cartoon
Where uncle Fester grins
While packing his steamer trunk?
Travel stickers cover the thing—
Lusitania, Titanic, Andrea Doria…
“It’s time to go out on the sea,” Auntie says
“Dot dot dot, dit dit dit” Uncle says
“There’s nothing like mid ocean” Auntie says
“In fog” Uncle says
“Maybe we should travel like Mark Antony” Auntie says
“No trunk this time, just our hearts…”
“Being history our hearts can’t float…”
“Better bring the trunk…”

I’ve been lucky to have had some good friendships. I say lucky because I’m not an easy person to know. I’m opinionated, contrarian, suspicious of cant, disposed to a generalized distrust of earnestness. I don’t believe in “theory” when applied to literature or culture. Literary theory is just opinion that hasn’t been subjected to serious rhetorical analysis. Jacques Derrida on animals is not worth the read. Sara Ahmed’s work on happiness is nonsensical. You can critique anything. This doesn’t make the activity valuable. As I say, I’m not easy to know. I suspect I’d have gotten along well with the late Christopher Hitchens.

When I was 15 and staying at a Key Biscayne resort with my father (who was on a business trip) I found myself alone in an elevator with Melvin Laird, Nixon’s secretary of defense. The year was 1970. My hero was John Lennon. I looked at Mel and said, “How’s your war going Mr. Laird? Are the body counts where you’d like them?” I was anorexic, stringy haired, and rebarbative. He glared and said nothing and bolted when the doors opened.

I’m not easy to like. Unless you’re against war, dislike social hypocrisy and all the “isms” as we say.

Which means knowing also who you are not.

Which means knowing what Bob Marley knew when he said:

“The truth is, everyone is going to hurt you. You just got to find the ones worth suffering for.”

Uncle history doesn’t like Frank Sinatra
He can’t help it
He also doesn’t like American cooking
Back in the day he liked Etruscan music
And when men died
He liked how they played the aulos
He likes New Orleans funerals
Being history is blueness
Its not the idea of blue
Its the blue itself

I am fond of the term “up river”
As a child I lived beside a river
Imaginary crows, real ones—
What luck! Here comes one
That will walk on my grave!

**
Lots of hate in my country
Would that I could talk with the pros
Marlowe, Shakespeare
Sun coming up

**

Did you know your parents were crazy?
Yes
Did you try to please them anyway?
Yes
Are you still trying to please them
Though they’re dead?
Yes
It’s late in the fourth quarter fella…

**

Sometimes I read self-help books
Then I read Wittgenstein
Since no one knows what the self is
Who am I really helping
Death of course
But Ludwig says death
Doesn’t exist
So I’m a dented Buddha

**
If Wallace Stevens was my neighbor
I’d bring him a glass doorknob
If Walt Whitman was my neighbor
I’d bring him fresh hay for his pony
If Emily Dickinson was my neighbor
I would never knock on her door
The heart has many mansions—
To paraphrase Jesus

**

I used to like the big heavy telephones
You could kill somebody with those things
Ma Bell and Maxwell’s silver hammer
Those were the days!

**

I once met a very old man
In an Estonian bar
He said he was the child
Who rang Strindberg’s doorbell
Then hid in the bushes
Hence, he laid claim
To being the inciting ghost
He was of course
Very drunk

**

Whitman’s pony was named “Frank”

Uncle and Aunt history read together by the hearth
Tonight its Wittgenstein’s notebook
“Ethics and aesthetics are one”
“No one should believe this,” Uncle says
“I think he was reading Keats,” Auntie says
A big wind howls outside their house
Their rude little house—ugly really
“Look,” says Uncle
“Philosophy is not a body of doctrine but an activity.”
Like Lear and his fool
They go out into the storm
Shaking their cadaverous fists

Aunt History loves Rosa Luxembrg
The Sparticist one
Who believed it was possible…

Don’t be foolish
Auntie says
Stop praying

“Women’s freedom
Is the sign of social freedom.”
Stop praying, get off your knees

Meantime unshakable dark
And thought inside a thought
Which is sometimes sung

Aunt history is cooking up a storm
She starts with the Renaissance—
Silver coated oysters
In questionable aspic
In later centuries
She uses spam
It’s not about eating well
It’s about chewing
History is a bolus
It’s the cow’s cud
It’s the thing
Your dog finds
The Baltic winter
Is coming
Keep those jaws going
Don’t flinch
Open wide

“I can’t unsee the past, can’t—
Bleriot flies over
Can’t unsee the silly airplane!”
In this way Uncle history
Is an old old man
With the soul
Of a Luddite
Machines get worse
Guns get bigger
He sorts his socks
Talks to himself…
“Bub! Can I call you
Bub? Ned Ludd?
Lets hide in the forest!
Oh please don’t say
Its too late!”

Boolean Logic

A friend lost his eyes once–
He was washing them
Prosthetic eyeballs
and they dropped
rolling
two plastic eyes
in transverse directions

My friend
froze–
no words
eyes
like an infinite
sequence
of mistakes
But he heard them
oblong, blue,
exact as algebra