Three Poems by Charles Bernstein Dept. of English S.U.N.Y. Buffalo bernstei@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu Postmodern Culture v.5 n.1 (September, 1994) Copyright (c) 1994 by Charles Bernstein, all rights reserved. This text may be used and shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of U.S. copyright law, and it may be archived and redistributed in electronic form, provided that the editors are notified and no fee is charged for access. Archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text on other terms, in any medium, requires the consent of the author and the notification of the publisher, Oxford University Press. [Audio files available from jefferson.village.virginia.edu by anonymous ftp, in /pub/pubs/pmc/issue.994/sounds] Soapy Water From The Absent Father in Dumbo (Tenerife: Zasterle Press, 1991 -- out of print). You've got to be patient sometimes--sounds like an anaesthetic, I'll be the doctor--but jump up into the next available hoop--Nick calling "Where are my galleys" they can't be lost in the mail because they went Federal Express. But something is always not there & if it's not apparent ingenuity (the mind's perennial ingenue) will think of it, rest enskewered. These are the saltine days--salty & soggy. The struts are finished, the shocks are leaking, & like the man says, there's always a simple solution-- simple & stupid. With the rug pulled out turns out there was no floor. & float, flutteringly behind or in bed with what salience has no surety. The thing expressed--sounds like some sort of pizza franchise, especially with the choices now offered--broccoli, zucchini, Belgian sausage, seven variety mushroom. No grade like the grade that blew the gasket. Turns out to be slop corridor, 7 days to shapelier nail filings, was there sex before Catholicism? It's not as if an economy of loss is not in-- you can't say circulation because it is kind of anticirculation: all this nervous energy dissipates production & erodes accumulation-- so you don't have to get so dramatic, talk about death & sex, or so moral, talk about idled hours--all that you ever need to lose is wasting away in anxiety's natural spring geysers. So let's bury that knife, & in the morning we can eat meat again. ------------------------------------------------------------- Claire-in-the-Building There is not a man alive who does not admire soup. I felt that way myself sometimes, in a manner that greatly resembles a plug. Swerving when there were no curbs, vying nonchalantly against the slot-machine logic of my temporary guardians, dressed always in damp patterns with inadequate pixelation to allow for the elan she protested she provoked on such sleep-induced outings in partial compliance with the work-release program offered as an principled advance on my prostate subjection to tales altogether too astonishing to submit to the usual mumbo jumbo, you know, over easy, eat and run, not too loud, no bright floral patterns if you expect to get a job in such an incendiary application of denouement. My word! Ellen, did you understand one thing Frank just said, I mean, the nerve of these Protestants, or whatever they call themselves or I ain't your mother's macaroni and cheese, please, no ice. Is sand biodegradable? Do you serve saws with your steak, or are you too scared to claim anything? No can't do. "I learned to read by watching Wheel of Fortune when I was a baby." By the time I was 5 you couldn't tell the slippers from the geese. That's right, go another half mile up the cliff and take a sharp left immediately after where the ABSOLUTELY NO TRESPASSING sign used to be, you know, before the war. Like the one about the chicken crossed the street because he wanted to see time fly or because he missed the road or he didn't want to wake up the sleeping caplets. A very mixed-up hen. "No, I can't, I never learned." By the time you get up it's time to go to sleep. Like the one about the leaky boat and the sea's false bottoms. Veils that part to darker veils. So that the fissure twisted in the vortex. Certain she was lurking just behind the facade, ready to explain that the joke had been misapplied or was it, forfeited? Never again; & again, & again. "Maybe he's not a real person." Maybe it's not a real purpose. Maybe my slips are too much like pratfalls (fat falls). Maybe the lever is detached from the mainspring. The billiard ball burned against the slide of the toaster (holster). That's no puzzle it's my knife (slice, life, pipe). The Rip that Ricochets around the Rumor. As in two's two too many. "I thought you said haphazard-- but if you did you're wrong." If you've got your concentration you've got just about everything worth writing home that tomorrow came sooner than expected or put those keys away unless you intend to use me and then toss me aside like so much worn out root beer, root for someone, Bill, take a chance, give till it stops hurtling through the fog or fog substitute. Save me So that I can exist Lose me So that I may find you "That's an extremely unripe plum." "There's no plum like the plum of concatenation." Plunge & drift, drift & plunge. The streets are icy with incipience. ------------------------------------------------------------- Mao Tse Tung Wore Khakis Who would have thought Paul McCartney would be the Perry Como of the 1990s? The Thunderbirds gleam end-to-end-to-end in the studio backlot. The lions have left their lair and are roaming just by the subconscious. PP-warning: Illegal received field on preceding line. Bethel/'94: I just don't want any hippies come in here and steal my computer. In my experience I often misspell words. Evidently Bob Dylan missed the exit and ended up in Saugerties. You can sell some of the people most of the time, but you can't