Category: Uncategorized

Uncle History is chained to words
Tied to avatars
He’s infused in church glass
He spins in the astronomers’
Ones and twos
And though
He can’t describe things himself
His digestion does the talking
Remember Chaplin’s stomach
How it outed him
When he was being polite
Its that uneasy burthen
Of intestines
It drove Stalin nuts
He heard bowels
All the time
You have to listen
It can’t be controlled

Dear Jesus: I’m Episcopalian
And seldom go to church—
I’ve excuses, I can’t drive
Which is necessary
In cities like mine
And being blind
The ride share company
Hates my guide dog
When they see her
They drive right past
So its a challenge
This business
Of church going
I tell myself
Everything’s a challenge
Which is what you did
And I walk the neighborhood
Sending love-beams
To my neighbors
Who, because
This is America
Seldom exit
Their houses
Driving straight in
To their garages
Which have
Electric doors
But I’m still out here
Beaming, Lord
As a blue jay
Goes about his business
Talking to no one

Auntie History reads Minturno
Its a pagan thing
Beauty is everywhere
But her hands are scarred
She’s the baker, the fishwife
The exile, the slave
She raises the book in her claws
Sees with exophthalmic eyes
That loveliness will cure you
If it doesn’t cause sickness
She has trouble turning pages
Toward the end so did Nietzsche
Who thought beauty was subjective
She smiles—
Neither shapes nor sounds
Or the black death
Were ever your own idea

More and more Uncle History
Likes less and less—
Hermes Trismegistus
“As above, so below”
What piffle!
He likes amanitas by the lake
“It isn’t difficult” he thinks
“To like a single mushroom”
Here and gone
With an excellent buzz

Someone is out to fool you
Uncle History knows all the someones
For instance he knew the boy
Who used to ring Strindberg’s doorbell
And hid in the bushes
August thought it was a ghost
In general storytellers are the easiest marks
Also when the facts are too plain
You can trick almost anyone
JFK wasn’t killed by a chinless psycho
It was (insert anyone)
Yes someone is out to fool you
This is why Uncle darns his own socks
And his wife darns hers
In an adjoining room
The boy who fooled Strindberg
Lived to be quite old
But he had holes in his socks

Afternoon in summer
The shaded turtle
Moved into the light—
Such a discovery
And no one to tell

We arm ourselves with modest joys
Says Auntie History
Birthday cakes, greeting cards
But the brain stem
Knows disasters
Are coming
Weather is unfair
Pinochle is unfair
Children ungrateful
On and on
Lets buy a rhyming
Birthday card—
Now you’re older
Life is colder
C’mon eat from Eve’s tree
And when you eat that apple
Swallow those seeds

Before Charlie Chaplin did it
Uncle History cooked his shoe
He called it “old faithful”
He’d tramped the arctic
The jungles—even
The squares of London
With his agreeable boot
He thought of how
He might write
A memoir called
“The Agreeable Boot”
Meanwhile—alas
His teeth weren’t up to it
No matter how long
He boiled
And what with
The tannic acids
Boot remained boot
Teeth fell out
“Nobody loves you
When your teeth fall out”
He sings
To his aged cat
Then he grasps it:
His shoe carries
Not the world
He thinks is real
But the world itself

We wouldn’t be us says Auntie History
Without the old stories
Of trickery
“Njinga of Ndongo and Matamba”
Or the old Finn tale
“Let’s Pretend We’re Eating”
Anansi the Spider
Weaving webs
Sit down over here
And drink water
She says to passersby
It’s just a cup of water

And shakes his bony fist
Still angry about evolution
Once upon a time
The metacarpal bones
Were like tuning forks
Fingers
Had the first words
Everyone read Braille
Back in the day
He’s pissed we’ve forgotten
Finger-tip vowels
Knuckle consonants
For as we’ve forgotten
We’ve lost more wonder
Than can be replaced
With mere tongues