A terrible poem and better meaning written when I was maybe seventeen when I should have known better. you see, the core of the poem says something trying to break out, but doomed by the misery of bad writing, bad teaching, living far too long in my head (my head went nowhere) (I went nowhere) (I was too scared to go) (nowhere was scarier): [comments] on returning from abroad: the omens Two nights ago, the moon grew red, shimmering like the surface of dark wine; [which doesn't] And just last night a brilliant star slashed the sky in quiet smoke, [meteors don't make noise] disappearing in the Western Sea; [Mediterranean sublimated] Soon after that, I saw a jackel. [for real] Tomorrow I leave this land. There are no omens in America, no strange stones, nor priests robed deep in black, square hats. [of course not; hats aren't robes] In these omens, I am sure, the meaning to be found is not a certain death, [death is always certain] nor that Rome shall totter beneath the crazed and royal actions of Caligula, [good grief!] he of the jeweled teeth, the gnawing disease; The meaning, instead, is just within the omens - [core of something here] the omens, the meaning (And for this, I shall travel to many a distant land [here we go!] crawling to death in the pampas, [difficult to do] great golden spiders glittering about me - [actually the Everglades] crawling into stone's throw, spear's thrust of the mad Jiwaro, [who are as sane as any of us!] and walking the streets of my native city, [bad Ginsberg imitation] exchanging many things with total strangers, [STDs?] waiting for their omens, their meanings, and dying, god knows where, in some white bed.) [monosyllabic Ginsberg Sunflower Sutra ending. What's good here is the idea of a _chain of omens,_ each foretelling others - an endless chain - in which meaning is found in permanent deferral. That incipient decon- struction/ism appears later on the series, now lost. Even today, I anxiously await signs and omens, knowing full well they'll only lead, uselessly, to others: a world of deferred omens, announcing nothing but themselves, predicting nothing but themselves. And there's comfort in that, however cold: meaning is there - it just has nothing whatsoever to do with us, but we sense a glimmer of unassimilable alterity in its presence. Or its hoped-for presence: otherwise, there's nothing, nothing at all, and we might as well die alone, as we always do, in some white bed.] _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list [email protected] http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
