I CLAIM THIS MANTLE
of the Good Gray Poet.
I claim this mantle: King of May.
from Pearl and Other Poems:
Sunday, May 10, 2015
TEKATAK
"Dinosaur Whitman," (c) 2015 emily eissenberg
TEKATAK
from Pearl and Other Poems
Restless, I entered the chat
room with Jack
distended
in speech & hyperlinks
&
lonely from solo work of scouring
vast archive of internet
banks &
Google
Books & encyclopedia sewers
& hundred thousand fibers
of
work-frayed
hair & scholar hat
& bleak-slouched
shoulders &
motionless
butt of sitting, numb
& flittering thoughts of
argument
moth
& outbranching
vain
bibliography brain
colorless emotional &
restless
for
love
& the formidable robust
muscular
bonds of human text:
for Sunflower Allens &
rose-sick
Blakes
asphodel
Williams &
blossomdeep
Annes
but in the chatrooms &
forums
& journals & blogs
the text was too abstract
woven layers wan & flavorless
soil too thorny or shallow
or deep:
no proper soil for the work
to
seed
the only ones who could read
were Jack & me
& me & Jack, &
our reading was a lovely
tekatak
plant.
I am a lovely tekatak
I have no history or culture
a flower of no particular
nation
relaying my clean fragrance
no asphodel or poppy
no gingham print patch of
sassafras
or
Appalachian sawtooth grass
no shield-flat plains of
Asian paddies
or
rice-ripe rows of sun-red grain
no chickadaw tree of tan
savannah
or
arboreal star of trilac plant:
When lilacs last in the
dooryard bloomed
I
wasn’t one.
When pearl-wet hair of willow
draped
I
wasn’t there.
My wet fronds wave in
lavender ponds
in seas no eye has ever seen:
Indian Sea, Atlantic stretch,
Corinthian
bays, Mariana Trench:
All earth’s oceans are too
deep
its plains are far too shallow
even rarefied air of moons
is
too blood-rich & thick
for tekatak’s tremulous branches
I spread across every
continent, and across
every continent’s origin
and at every continent’s
conclusion,
there I am, a tekatak
blossom:
luxurious and single,
particular, disparate,
a disparate particular
layering of
single luxurious fragrance
alike to each who smells me,
whoever smells me, respiring
the singular unique sameness
of each to each his single
breathing—this—this breath—
this breathing—
the breathed out perspired
flavor
of his diet & habits &
climes
the scent of these things
each
to each nimbly parting
the individual fibers
all truckling to sunk-down
shoots & roots &
eager
to receive
the tekatak-lovely tekatak
stalks
& tekatak
feet &
tekatak
flowers
Of all particular continents,
flavors, diets, climes,
& also the ozone husk of
these,
invisible distillation
the produced offspring of
everywhere
& nowhere, native alike
to canyon-sediment nomad
pasts
& passed over oral traditions
to musk-bright neon
modernities
& homogenous rows of Tai Pei
McDonald’s
to refugee camp futures of
displaced
workers & pidgin-ambivalent
lingua francas
to furred ashtrays of dank
Alexandrias & machinegun tons
of child Crusades
to spaceship moons of
forbidden books
& Caribbean classrooms of colonial
daffodils
to crowded streets of
Bollywood screens
& traffic-thick lanes of Bangkok
anthems
to North African ports of
island palms
& Jerusalem mosques of desert
dates
Among all this, remarkable
fact:
I have never been seen, no
soil bears me
Everywhere-wide is too thin
Nowhere-thick, too deep:
except your marmoreal
branches, Jack,
the tekatak
plant wouldn’t BE
from Pearl and Other Poems:
http://www.amazon.com/Pearl-Other-Poems-Crimson-Hexagon/dp/0692313079/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1429895012&sr=8-1&keywords=lee+sharks+pearl
Saturday, May 9, 2015
RINGTONE
RINGTONE
from Pearl and Other Poems
me:
Sometimes, when I wake up
in the night, I text myself
poems
instead of going back to
sleep.
Sent 5:49 AM on Thursday
me: I am
lying in bed
and the birds are starting to
sing.
My wife does not want me
to read her my poem
because she is asleep.
All the lights are out. I do
not
understand why I am awake,
when the only light
is this thin soup trickling
through the blinds
and the birdsong
and this total meal of light
from the phone in front of my
face
and the repeated icon
of my face beside each text
Sent at 5:58 AM on Thursday
me: Someone
I don’t know
a hallway of homogeneous
doors
of my repeated face
Sent at 6:00 AM on Thursday
me: I want
to feel an emotion
I’m trying to decide which
one:
Hungry
Thirsty
Lying here next to you.
Nothing seems quite right
Sent at 6:05 AM on Thursday
me: I will
feel “push my face
into my pillow a little bit.”
My knee pops and my body
feels mildly feverish
like there is a thin
layer
of gingivitis running beneath
my skin.
Sent at 6:07 AM on Thursday
me: My body
is bright and sore
My eyes are burning
and I am happy as I stumble
around the kitchen, fumbling
with stuff, not seeing a
thing.
Sent at 6:27 AM on Thursday
me: There is
a sore sense of
newness in my teeth
A cavity of something
brightly new
Sent at 6:29 AM on Thursday
me: I sit
down Indian-style
on the kitchen floor
to contemplate this newness
Sent at 6:30 AM on Thursday
me: There is
no clangor at all
in the world, except—
a little bell is ringing
Sent at 6:36 AM on Thursday
from Pearl and Other Poems:
http://www.amazon.com/Pearl-Other-Poems-Crimson-Hexagon/dp/0692313079/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1429895012&sr=8-1&keywords=lee+sharks+pearl
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