Hugh Fox, US
|
| Free
Verse
Solitude
“Watch out,” they said, “forget
about buying that place
in the country by the river, you’re getting antique now, you
need people more,” down an unpaved road, heavily lined with
old oaks, pines, birches, ten miles out into the country, the
house with almost an acre of riverfront property, my pathologist
wife driving into town every morning, the kids gone, one in
South Korea, another in Hamburg, another in Kansas City,
internet and phone calls, but....at first I feel the loneliness,
no more classes, no more secretaries, just my wife at night
dragging herself home from the lab, I build a screened-in
gazebo down by the river itself, against my wife’s warning,
“The river is like a street, you never know who is going to
drive/float by,” at first lonely, but then the cranes, egrets,
squirrels, deer, the trees, clouds, the flow of the river
itself,
for the first time become “real” for me.
Meditations
1.
Sleep(lessness),
lunatic-lunesta,
wind-slush
storm, still stonehenged
waiting to be tottered
up/down.
2.
Wanting to believe
what I always
believed in the old meerschaum mixture 29
apple and coke for lunch days
that I was moving into a forever
Spring.
3.
Hard to imagine
imagine-less
foreverness, whole memory worlds
going nevermore
mit mir / with me.
4.
Rachelle cloudturn
talk floating
into forever word-tennis
ecstasy.
Unchange
Old med school
pictures, she
looks like about fifteen, more like
a ballerina going to her dressing room
to pour herself into her tights, than
going up to a podium to receive an
M.D., sixtieth birthday three days
away, coinciding with her Brazilian
med school publishing comprehensive
volumes about past students (with
photos), as I begin to see her fulltime
in way-back-when time, nothing to
do with riding the current to retirement.
Awarenessing
Every night,
t’aime
t’aime
t’aime
t’aime
t’aime
multiple kisses,
sixty, but from the neck
down still twenty-four,
spring sun and the town emerges from
its catacombs, another cold-front (“no
accumulation”) and
resdescent death
always “soon”-ing on
forest-edge in the river-trees,
blocking our incarnating into the
almost-tulip now.
Creating
Creating more
holidays, Happy
Breathday (Lung Fungus, Ralph
Edminster, 1932-2008), and Happy
Heartdays (Ventricular Aneurysm
Rupture, Jean Anne Kappel, 1935-
2000), Happy Esophogealcancerday
(Richard Morris, 1934-1991), workplace
caketime, embracetime,
Español
ification
Brazil
pomegranate blood and Chinoise-
noodle spaghetti, one more day of
bellringing and (short) afternoon
naps.
Now (# 140)
Millions
resurrection day
street,
palms,
old lady, daughter,
granddaughter, white scruff pooch
blesséd are the non-territorials,
hail, rain, sun, seventy degrees and rising,
there is no god,
there were no incarnations,
there are no sacred rule-books,
the universe couldn’t have
begun from
nothing,
but it couldn’t be eternal, had
to begin,
but it couldn’t have, so it/we
couldn’t
have ever
been.
Back To
Back to the small
town/country,
why we peasants came here in the
first place, the classic pan-Europe
edge of fun but not quite there
faces, the miracle of mashed potatoes
and gravy with toasted-buttered bread,
steak and a little beer before the
coconut meringue pie and back to the
squirrels, raccoons, opossums squashed
all over the resurrected spring highways
as we move into a night of snow-mush
rain.
Now (# 141)
The Dickens
films
E.M. Forester’s
A Room with a View
unbridled passion
versus
inside the documentary news
no resurrection
but maple sugar candy and
the running across the moors
toward
nothing else but a
pastless - futureless
now-alive.
Finally
Finally
(multiple bird-races
simultaneous
with the screaming
tadpoles, five
deer under our hilltop
porch—
balcony, two drakes, one
duck in
our river/lagoon, the
elms down,
the sycamores about to
open their
hands, last fall’s
potatoes and smoked
ham, fresh-this-morning’s
eggs and
milk, the water really
not bad,
electricityless
moonlight/firelight
tonight, more than enough
five
miles from the nearest
road feather
comforters and wool
blankets)
home.
The Right
The right blanket(s),
bed softness/hardness,
crack sealings around the
windows,
shoes,
underwear,
computer,
car.
breakfast,
pills,
wife/wives,
children,
degree,
job/jobs,
weather,
condiments,
potatoes,
beef,
wine,
spread-legs,
erection,
surgery,
deathbed (Kaddish),
grave.
Normal Exotic
1.
My grandmother had
left home when she was about twelve when her deaf mother was
killed by a train as she was crossing the track and hadn’t heard
it coming, and she found a Czech restaurant owner in Cicero
(just outside Chicago) who took her in as if she were an orphan,
and got her to work in the restaurant, finally turning her into
a cook. So when I was raised by my grandmother in Cicero all I
ever got was Czech food. Goulash is Hungarian, but that’s what
everything was—everything
thrown in together. Ham and/or sausages, salmon, steak, chicken,
sauerkraut as if it were the basis of all life, and red peppers
cut up and thrown in, potatoes, potatoes, potatoes, mashed,
single huge potatoes, or made into pancakes, in Hebrew latkes.
It also was true she was a hidden Jew who had married a Catholic
and given up Judaism for Catholicism...except when it came to
the kitchen.
So here I am, age 76, retired from what seems like a hundred
years of teaching writing, married to a Brazilian M.D. who hates
to cook. So every afternoon I play grandma and get out the ham
or salmon or steak and start cutting the purple cabbage and
celery and red peppers, Brussels sprouts, onions and garlic,
always olive oil and some shredded cheese, a little wine vinegar
and start it all cooking, first as hot as I can get it, then
turn the heat down and let it “bake” for more than an hour.
2.
Then for dessert a
mélange of fresh fruits, grapes and pineapple, mangos, chirimoya.
That’s when I let my years in the Andes, Argentina, the
mountains in Chile come in. Nothing “exotic” for me. The
tropical me built on top of my Czech-Hungarian base. Usually I
sneak in a little cinnamon and honey, unobtrusively, so you
hardly notice...but DO.
Exotic?
Not for me.
And when I make my yearly visit to see family in Brazil and the
table gets even more exotic, for me it’s just another variation
of normal.
Dreamland
1.
Dreamland dawn
airport checkin,
“This toothpaste too exceeds
allowable size, what do you want
me to do with it?”
“No comment,” and when I come
back fifteen minutes later with
“How about emptying it by half
or three-quarters,” a straight-faced
answer, “It has already been destroyed.”
2.
Greenball-dustball-iceball-cloudball
earth, walking out on the furrowed,
plowed clouds into pontifical eternity.
J’espere /I hope.
3.
Clever-inventive
little apepeople
to be
able to
fly
cry
sleep
reproduce
meditate
die.
2.
4.
Multiplicity
(O’Hare) flowers, “Ich
bin ganz müde...Ich kann nichts mehr/
I’m very tired...I really can’t do anything
else,” “Aber du müsst.../ But you have to.”
Can, must...difficult to believe just how
much papal glory flowers in the world of
63 kids shot dead (Chicago) in the last
three and a half months, 60 more dead in
you know where
yesterday.
5.
Why didn’t I ever
learn Czech, Hungarian
Rumanian, my soul still there, muffining
and sauerkrauting, what if there’d never
been a holocaust and the Jews were still
($$)
in
charge?
6.
One last (Hiroshima
Mon Amour) (Barack
Obama)(Clinton) “I never had....,”
Elizabeth I, Nicholas Nickelby, rural
(Not “Where have all the flowers gone?,”
but “Where all the flowers Columbus are!),
(Nyquil, bananas, milk)
(Hopefully to have 10 more Rest
in Insomnia)
(Bon nuit / Good night)
years.
3.
7.
A two day Epigraphic
Convention, Westerville,
Ohio, Christ-town reincarnated, Messiah-town,
past the Arbys and McDonalds, the Olive Garden,
Fifth Third Bank, Taco Bell, a rough-stone
Jesus Resurrectus Est stained glass windows
church,
almost
TI
A
NAKU
SUN IN THE MIDDLE OF
WATER SNAKE
God-snake Catholic church in the middle of the
(Ohio) water.
8.
World War II never
happened, the Viet Nahm
War, Korean War, World War I, the Civil,
Revolutionary, Get-Then-Indios
wars,
Adam and Eve never ate no apples, Christ
didn’t have to get crucified, no need
for resurrections, Christ on the cross, altars,
Easter,
except for the coming of (Columbus Conservatory)
Spring.
4.
9.
Ducks, drakes,
ducklings,
cows, bulls, calves,
I wanna scream at all the little-kid
families, “Turn off the hell-looks,
green spring green Sunday moon engulfment
is the year’s translation into Now.”
10.
Welcomed back (Snow
Bush)
(Red Ginger)
(Wild Plantain)
(Croton)
(Ti Plant)
Pat Leahy, 80
versus my 76, however temporarily,
HOME.
11.
New(old) (to me)
churches, condos,
twilight towers on top,
faces, races,
new faces = rebirths
pas de / no crime ici /here,
even the dandelions and
(Shabbat Shalom)
Reubens, if only I could change
bodies
the way I change
cities.
5.
12.
Rough flight over
(white) vulture-wing
clouds, how could (Wife III) we
live (batting) together for 30+
(dreamtime? realtime?)
minutes/years?
13.
The record/archives,
L.A., Chicago, Brooklyn
Heights,
Santa Catarina, Brazil, Dravidian-Mayas,
ancient Cathaginians, Lebanese, Iraqians,
cults,
APU
ABU
ABBA
ever make it to Bolivia, Peru, the South
Seas, New Zealand, Ohio,
I become
written on paper in a
winter
rain.
Spring Dusk
Pomeranian Walk
Spring dusk dogwalk
and the ancient
neighborhood voices start in, “What
mean you that my hat not America? I
here not from here,” “I want the columns
in front of the house fluted, that’s the
word, isn’t it, Corinthian, not Doric, I
haven’t been working my ass off for centuries
not to feel I’ve made it,” “Ah, the creuses,
don’t you love them, they remind me
of Surrey, you know what I mean...,” “I’m
tired of working on Sundays, Sundays are
Mass days, Cristus Incarnatus est.I can’t
feel that in the infernal stockyards, I don’t
care how much I make,” “I miss Yiddish. Too
much English. Shethls, you know what I
mean?,” “More chances here, we’ve got
our Schules,” “But no one speaks Yiddish,”
“We’ll look around,” “First Communion is
the single most important event in your
life. After Baptism,” “And marriage,” “And
Extreme Unction,” “Don’t you just love
the trees. My favorite tree-looks are
Sycamores, you know, how the tree itself
looks, but I love Maple leaves...and Poplars,
I’d like to have a whole row of trees planted
in front...more out in the back yard,” “It’s
not that far from downtown. And the university,
looks of things going on there, the music
department, theater department,” “I’ve always
2.
loved rivers, the
Thames, the Danube, there
are two places, you know, Buda is one, the
other is Pest. It sounding so straaange to
live in Buda or to be a pest in Pest,” “All
the churches, the Congregationalists,
Catholics, Lutherans, Methodists, Episcopalians,
all the religious wars, and now we embrace
each other...blessed by Christ...,” “I love the
marketplace down by the river, I love big
potatoes by the big bag, and squash, I love
squash, and asparagus...,” “The trees are so
miraculous in Spring. It’s really a yearly
miracle,” finally reaching the end of the street
with blasting (Lincoln) radio, a Mr. I-Pod walking
by followed by two short-skirted blondes on
cell-phones, but I’m still in 1887, even if the
voices have stopped.
(hand across old brick, look at the
size of those Sycamores, Kosher deli on the
corner, a used bookstore next door, Nicholas
Nickleby novel, Nicolas Nickleby film....
wanted to go back into the vision of the
words themselves)
At least for a while.
To Terror Or
Not To Terror
Terrorist
no TV
nice
sofa
a little beer
big soft bed
you look out the bedroom window
and its all pinetree landscaped, how
about a little Debussy, Jardins Sous La
Pluie, even if it’s not raining, Glazunov’s
only violin concerto,
cinnamon raisins,
brownies,
a nice Reuben sandwich, a little very
willing sex tonight
why (to die)
why (not).
Life-Drawing
Class
Olde Town, Grand
River, a little park,
benches by the man-made waterfall,
cop car hidden behind other cars in the
parking lot, we’re eating our beef and
cheddar out in the sun, under the trees
a fat woman and her boyfriend/husband,
maybe their skinny bum son, he throws
an empty beer bottle into the river, cop
gets out, no attention to where the
bottle went, some serious talking, after
the cop leaves I ask them what happened,
don’t think the cop saw the bottle, she
starts in screaming, totally drunk, like
something out of Dickens’ Nicholas
Nickleby , “I’ve been in this fuckin town
since I was born, worked for GM for ten
fuckin years, what the fuck can’t we have
a little beer, sit by our river, fuckin stupid
town,” the two guys agree, “Fuckin leave
us alone,” I go back to my beef and cheddar,
later that night Sei-Eun Kim in a DMA piano
recital, Debussy’s Pagodes/ Pagodas, La
Soirée dans Grenade /Evening in Grenada,
Jardins sous la pluie/ Gardens in the Rain,
and the afternoon washes completely down
the time-drain.
Economics
We go around the
malls and non-mall stores
every evening, look at tags, cookware, fans,
Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse toys,
high-heeled suede shoes, fancy multi-colored
abstract expressionist blouses, notebooks,
dishes, sleeping pills, rugs, swimming trunks,
silverware, everything MADE IN CHINA, past
final going-out-of-business sales, remembering
Chicago and the Stockyards and Gary and the
steel mills, the manufacturing glass, as if you don’t
realize your head is in the guillotine until the blade
begins to slice down through your
neck.
Debussy
Pagodas
Gardens in the Rain
Les Sirenes/Sirens
The hills (colines) of
Anacapri
Mer/Sea always
the Mer/Sea,
1862-1918
56 years
that had a couple centuries
condensed into them.
|
Read
Additional Poems by XXX
Hugh Fox—Free Verse: Solitude,
Meditations, Unchange, Awarenessing, Creating, Now (# 140),
Back To, Now (# 141), Finally, The Right, Normal Exotic,
Dreamland, Spring Dusk Pomeranian Walk, To Terror Or Not To
Terror, Life-Drawing Class, Economics, Debussy
Free_Verse_02_Hugh_Fox.htm
This page
—
|
|