| Marvin Bell
USA
White Clover Once when the moon was out about three-quarters and the fireflies who are the stars of backyards were out about three-quarters and about three-fourths of all the lights in the neighborhood were on because people can be at home, I took a not so innocent walk out among the lawns, navigating by the light of lights, and there there were many hundreds of moons on the lawns where before there was only polite grass. These were moons on long stems, their long stems giving their greenness to the center of each flower and the light giving its whiteness to the tops of the petals. I could say it was light from stars touched the tops of flowers and no doubt something heavenly reaches what grows outdoors and the heads of men who go hatless, but I like to think we have a world right here, and a life that isn't death. So I don't say it's better to be right here. I say this is where many hundreds of core-green moons gigantic to my eye rose because men and women had sown green grass, and flowered to my eye in man-made light, and to some would be as fire in the body and to others a light in the mind over all their property.
from: The Book of the Dead Man
(#30) 1. About the Dead Man's Late Nights When the dead man cannot go to sleep, he squeezes blood from a stone. Remember, the dead man is lapidary but orgasmic. The dead man extracts blood, bile, semen, saliva, hair and teeth. He weighs fillings and counts moles. He takes a look at himself in two mirrors at once. Front to back, side to side, top to bottom, the dead man is a matrix of handprints, stitches, whiskers, tiny volcanoes where vaccinations took, mineral deposits left to unclaimed salvage, congealed oil of an insufficient tolerance, wax and water. There are many ways to look at the dead man but only one way to understand him. The dead man can pass through a keyhole, the lens of an eye, the eye of a needle, walls that have neither doors nor windows. He can disappear and reappear, he can summon feelings, he can get down on his knees, he can wave from afar, he can tie himself in knots, he can twist a thought or turn it over, he can count sheep, but sometimes he cannot go to sleep. What then does he say when it's why not? He says absolutely nothing, precisely nothing, eloquently nothing. The dead man has dissolved the knot in which his tongue was tied. Whereas formerly the dead man was sometimes beside himself, now he is one. Whereas formerly the dead man cohered in the usual way, now he thinks dissolution is good for the soul, a form of sacramental undoing viewed through a prism, a kind of philosophic nakedness descending a staircase. He wants to be awake at the very end. So the dead man gets up at night to walk on glass. He tumbles out of his sheets to consort with worms. He holds back the hands of the clock, he squeezes the light in his fists, he runs in place like a man on a treadmill who has asked a doctor to tell him what to do.
2. More About the Dead Man's Late Nights
The dead man mistakes numbness for sleep. He mistakes frostbite for the tingle of anticipation, a chill for fresh air, fever for lust. He thinks he could throw a stone to kingdom come, but he is wrong. He is used to being taken for granite, for a forehead of stars or a swath of matted grass. But the dead man is more than the rivulets chiseled into the marker. He is far more than the peaceful view at the downhill border, the floral entry, the serenity. The dead man is the transparent reed that made music from thin air. His life has been a die-hard joy beyond the sweep of starlight, he transcends the black hole, he has weight and specific gravity, he reflects, he is rained on. The dead man does not live in a vacuum, he swallows air and its ill effects. The dead man is rapt to stay the course, fervent for each spoke of the sun. The dead man is mad to ride the wheel to the end of the circle.
Sounds of the Resurrected 1. Today, Tibet
One day I have fifteen minutes to stop the ruination. Today, Tibet. Other places, other days, but today Tibet. This thin air makes me dizzy. I breathe not deeply but partially, and I slip on the sleety condensation. Bones keep at this altitude. Mountains top the clouds and I have come with the lowdown. Prayer wheels and a hollow wind at this altitude. Now fifteen minutes of the ghostly as I tour the rim of a rice bowl. They are clothed in shadow who breathe deeply and sit censored in the monasteries. What low chant, what undertone of peace, what karmic rumor can sweep away an army? Necessary to show them calm targets. Necessary to suffer the hollow wind to moan, the bones to clack and a stench to settle in the rice. One day I have fifteen minutes on the front page. Other places, other days, but today Tibet.
2. Tomorrow, Tibet
Yesterday, a people. Tomorrow, an obit, a footnote, an explanation. Yesterday, an earthen water vessel. Today, the chipped, the shattered, the missing, the buried. Those high-pointed hats to top the stars. Those spinning tapestries of prayer, now shreds. Tatters that thread the wind with fringe, gut, remembrance of things past. Coins for Hamlet to take up alms. I don't want to hear this, chants that catch in the throat. I don't want to see this, like a dead fox mounted on a barbed-wire fence. Travel the back country, it's Tibet. Fuss a little, make good time, see the sights, it's Tibet. Tibet the land that was, is, and shall remain ... unwritten. The wind exiled, the clouds scattered, a people sacked. How shall we move mountains when Tibet disappears in thin air?
"Why Do You Stay Up So Late?" Late at night, I no longer speak for effect. I speak the truth without the niceties. I am hundreds of years old but to do not know how many hundreds. The person I was does not know me. The young poets, with their reenactments of the senses, are asleep. I am myself asleep at the outer reaches. I have lain down in the snow without stepping outside. I am frozen on the white page. Then it happens, a spark somewhere, a light through the ice. The snow melts, there appear fields threaded with grain. The blue moon blue sky returns, that heralded night. How earthly the convenience of time. I am possible. I have in me the last unanswered question. Yes, there are walls, and water stains on the ceiling. Yes, there is energy running through the wires. And yes, I grow colder as I write of the sun rising. This is not the story, the skin paling and a body folded over a table. If I die here they will say I died writing. Never mind the long day that now shrinks backward. I crumple the light and toss it into the wastebasket. I pull down the moon and place it in a drawer. A bitter wind of new winter drags the dew eastward. I dig in my heels.
In Beirut, at the Worst of It In Beirut, at the worst of it, four men in their twenties play Russian roulette. They sit in a black, derelict sedan, discarded in a no-man's-land awash in stone, once the facades of buildings--now leaning to host a meandering barricade. The cheap revolver they handle is heavier than it was an hour ago when they set out. It looks worn, as if the safety may not hold or one might pull a misfire at the worst moment. They hand it around with figs and an apple. They have nothing to lose and each takes a bite of the apple in turn, then quickly places the barrel to his temple and pulls the trigger. After four clicks, they discuss whether or not to continue. A jeep goes by but doesn't care to stop. They live in a world fingertips cannot touch. Some fatigues are boredom. Much is withheld. One of them grabs the revolver into the back seat and spins the chamber. "My turn," he says. He has woken from fever to find a cold hell. There are burns behind the forehead that do not smoke. While the talk continues, one of them from a napkin makes a bird you can make the tail wave on.
The Troubling I still think of the suicide standing on a ladder to climb over a fence at the ball field when he could have just walked around it. He had a dark color for a last name and seemed okay except for his father, famous for a series of fire hazards he made with his own hands and rented. I must have let the book fall closed on which the confession appeared after a candle was applied. I dozed off without consigning the name to memory and woke trying to manufacture distance to go with time. A white, slightly ruffled sky in late summer covers time and the sun, and in any case it isn't true what they say about the water and the air and even the fire, but about dirt what we heard was ashes to ashes and dust to dust, though we were not to recognize the voice. There is a windowsill on which a frail winged corpse of no weight has fallen next to the husk of a ladybug. There is an outside beyond the farthest thing we can imagine. There is a schoolyard with a fence around it to keep out bad ideas just up the street from the bus station.
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Photo: Jason
Bell