| Eric Bliman USA "Greetings" Being from another planet, you who have traveled so far to walk among us: with two legs, arms, thumbs, and eyes. What a splendid disguise you've devised for carrying yourself in -- and just barely recognizable as human, you poor little breating, beating thing! You must be suffocating in all that size, that shape. How amazing that you're able to find the will, the strength to go about moving a single digit of that fleshly weight -- an inch of skin, an ounce of freight -- against the odds, the law of gravity, inertia; common sense, good taste and everything that waits. For the universe to catch up, lag behind. Flee, post haste! "Dennis Miller Vs. Copernicus" Nothing has been discovered in all the galaxies, except for the stars, of course and a few of the better-known nebulae several belts of asteroids a handful, or two, of planets a comet, once in a while, that spots our telescopes some absences which we take to mean presences of -- that is, -- black holes Statistically speaking it'd be miraculous, simply ridiculous, somewhat perverse, not to mention an unsayable waste of so much perfectly good space -- all the space that ever was, is, or will be -- if we were the only ones looking up. I find it hard to believe that there aren't other beings believing in us, at this very moment. Imaginations capable of imagining us imagining them imagining us imagining them. How obnoxious to think this little speck of dust is somehow more blessed than all the rest. And what if we really are about to be swept under the rug, into the dustbin of some alien history? Is it possible to be mindful of all the universes contained in a leaf, a grain of sand? Can we? Should we? Imagine how we'd react. How stunned and sullen, we'd all act at the nerve of those hotheads on Alpha Centauri. They must think they own the whole galaxy. They've recently passed an ordinance forbidding anyone to train their telescopes on anything higher than a pack of cigarettes. What rubbish, what micro-mindedness! Intergalactic nitwits, refugees of some trans-dimensional hubris! I don't want to go on a rant, here-- But we must all act fast before some superintelligent -- need I say, extraterrestrial? -- real estate agent deems our rock the perfect spot to construct an on-ramp for a highway of wormholes... We must lie down before the bulldozers. We must make our homes hospitable to visitors from other worlds: Jacarta, and Jupiter included. We must spread our picnic blankets at midnight, and feast our eyes on those heavenly delicacies: crab, on the stratospheric half-shell; the dippers, both big and little, tipped and spilling their whey across the Milky Way, light years hence -- so that even the armies of ants that ransack our puny opulence can stuff their larvae's mouths on the crumbs, the planets, of our dream-leavings. "Performance Art" Reminds me of a certain theater, miles and blocks far enough off Broadway, to be just barely in the same time zone as those rafters that are too high to touch even with a stick, and that are crossed and criscrossed by vertiginous catwalks that descent precipitously as nightmares. But in this city, this theater, here: the audience sits close, just close enough to the stage to get tagged on the chin with a fist of paint, if they're not too careful: how they lean, with the brush. And sweat beads slender airborne arcs, as dog-drops shaken off after a swim, have been known to launch into the cheap seats: fifteen rows in. But what gives me gooseflesh, what makes me stare: is this pair of boots left on stage after the performance. A pair of workboots spotted with paint of every conceivable color. A pair of ordinary workboots tells the story. "With Wings" May you travel to the four corners of the globe With your Nikon, and your book of poems, That dog-eared coffee-ringed copy of Neruda's "Captain's Verses," that I caught you reading At a friend's wedding. May you even find The experience that you've sought for, far and wide -- >From Castro's Cuba northward, skirting The coastline, up I-95, to Maine. For I have seen you cast your luminous net Into the backwaters of the autumnal sunset, And reel in Beauty only-knows... What Secretive freight of the sea, light and air. Yet when the time came to set sail for home, You found it largely unchanged. The same unsettled looks You wrestled with all your life, Were those faces that searched yours For clues, as if they might somehow read There: the last blank page Of a B-grade supermarket romance, first -- this story That was not yours. They were all there to greet you, glassy-eyed and smiling; To treat you like a foreigner, Damaged goods, the prodigal scorned. An alien invasion in your own backyard. The grass itself suffused in the interplanetary light Of laundromats and greasy spoons; those barsfull Of brass and sadness and creaking men, were the bars Your father might have frequented in his youth. But this time you are prepared for the worst thing That could possibly happen: a wedding Band, some ball-and-chain like job To tie you down and rape you, over And over. Nine to five; 24 - 7. Though you told yourself it could never happen. Insisted, it was not meant to be this way. And maybe it wasn't. Maybe The only home you would be given To know, were those of ships, trains, and aeroplanes Flitting from sky to separate sky, heaven to Separate heaven. And maybe the love you were meant for To have, or hold, was the one that never found you In the airport lounge: hungover and homesick, >From rum and coke number one- Too-many. That left you feeling, reeling At 3 a.m., for those wings, beyond overdue To take you back to: Pittsburgh Punx'y Poughkeepsie -- Wherever someone even now is waiting sleeplessly, With arms poised and ready to... However briefly. Between countries at war; Cholera, famine, And the sea. These pressing matters pressing you Far and wide. To the four corners of the globe. The globe doesn't have any corners.
© All Copyright, Eric Bliman. |