Thinking of Creeley

Dear Danny,

Thanks but no thanks for the video of the Chinese female nude orchestra. They sound worse than the Zieglersville Philharmonic. And they don't look all that good either. Very Stepford-y. In short, neither nut cracker or nut exciter--just ball-busting bad. God, I felt so jaded not being aroused in any way. 

In the mean and less demeaning time, a moment of Zen from Robert Creeley, brooding on the dying man he saw in the mirror that could be none other than the man who hopes he's not next in line. Then my mirroring poem.

THE MIRROR

Seeing is believing.

Whatever was thought or said,

these persistent, inexorable deaths

make faith as such absent,

our humanness a question,

a disgust for what we are.

Whatever the hope,

here it is lost.

Because we coveted our difference,

here is the cost.

--Robert Creeley, Life and Death, p. 31

THE SHARD

          for Robert Creeley and Fred F.

1.

Just enough glass

to see the face 

I still call "mine."

What choice do I have

but to see

this "me" that outlives "others"?

2.

But if I did have a choice,

if I was still bison-painting

caveman of the lysergic 60s,

what then?

The gathering dead

would leave

what's left of looking

to me and me alone.

They would know my gaze

holds them here

in an afterlife

that needs only this place

to occur once

and for all

for no other reason

than to stay

bidden to be

unhidden.

3.

This broken mirror

brings good luck.

Each shard multiplies seeing

into an insect multitude

of presences

hived and humming

in stillness.

4

Look at yourself.

Do you still believe the rumor

that you are alone?

See how looking instills

the morning with enough light

for retrieval of the forms

things take to come to mind.

One is not alone or lonely.

One is intersection.

One is crowd control. 

5.

Just one fragment will suffice

to betoken the permanent coexistence

of all worlds we could know

locked in the very sight of you.

David Federman, from: The Book of Migraine Melancholia