Planet of the Blind

Uncle History has always hung around hospitals…

Before they discovered ether
Patients screamed their lungs out
(From “patiens”
One who suffers
And the verb “patior”
Which means I am suffering)
He saw how non-transactional it was
Everyone suffered
Tuberculosis for the doctors
Women bleeding out
Asklepios with his snakes
No one emerged alive
Which was and is
The source of history
Uncle carries a stalk without blossoms
Inside his coat…

Uncle History murders his darlings
But he never uses the eraser
He inveigles young writers
And they, quite properly
See new patterns in the wheat
Losing the past
All the old torched houses
Are forgotten
This is how he stays fit
Tricking generations
With novelty—
Lyric keyholes
Joining dreams together
To a single reality
A longing
And so much longing there is…

You can’t use the word “longing” in poetry anymore…

But leaves continue to fall
They whirl under street-lamps
“Death’s butterflies”
As my friend Jarkko
Called them—and
He’s gone too.

Try speaking about life
Without clean desire
Also known
As tenderness—also
Called yearning
Aching, pining,
And all for what?
The day holds meanings,
We feel accomplished,
We sweep up the children’s hair.

You can make all the jokes you want
About Uncle History—he’s heard them all
Which is another joke
Though he won’t tell it
Shakespeare heard it
The joke history won’t tell
And its no special distinction
To have heard it
You just need the ears
Of a church mouse
When its deep winter
And she wants to gnaw
The piano’s felt
While keeping alert
For the cat
It’s the sneaking up joke
You only hear it
When you’re doing something wrong

Uncle History is like an undertaker with OCD
A corpse lies before him
He dreams of fixing it
Patching the skin
Then he spots a spider
And has to chase it
In this way he fixes nothing
The spider always escapes
He secretly wants to control the sky
It was he who whispered in Ben Franklin’s ear
More than once he’s killed inquiring people

It wasn’t his fault that Uncle History fell down a well

He was in Sweden where lots of people fall into holes

He was in a utopian mood, trying to imagine a better future

No more epidemics, children fed, etc.

He even hummed a little tune—something insipid

But possibly catchy, the song

Of a traveling salesman maybe

And that’s when he tumbled

“This is not my fault” he said

It was an old well

An abandoned farm

The water waist deep

He repeated “not my fault”

Even so, he wasn’t alone

A white eel swam around his toes

It had been in the well its whole life

It was blind

“This is a metaphor for everything” he thought

When he realized he couldn’t get out

He shouted—aiming his voice up

At a sky colored hole

“This is the invention of prayer” he thought

How he got out we’ll never know

It wasn’t much at first—

Something like a post horn 

Sounding from a distance

Uncle History’s conscience

It wasn’t much

A slightest breeze 

In his hair

A haunted house feeling

Dead leaves at his feet

“I’ve got to get out of this racket”

(He writes an old fashioned telegram)

“Facts soaked in blood” Stop

“Still feel good at heart” Stop

“Want good, hard unpolitical tears” Stop

“Will you rescue me?” Stop

He looks down 

Sees his cord has been cut

Uncle History puts his toe in the river
Like most rivers “his”
Heads to sea
Tides rise and fall
He knows what’s going on
All from the piggy who goes to market
He’s sort of like a blind person
Who knows what the fuck’s going on
Because he’s smart
His toes are sharp
The river carries a vow
He hears it through his feet
It’s not unlike the song
Of the snake—
Not unlike
Means both rare
And familiar
Incoming message through toe:
Come closer

My friend is out of the office
His automatic reply ziths to my inbox
Of course Shakespeare wouldn’t know
What this means
But tragedy is failed communication
I was going to give my pal
A hundred bucks
But not now
He’s out of the office
And as my grandmother
Used to say:
“I’d rather owe it to you
Than cheat you out of it”