Bout

Jack Galmitz

Bout Copyright Jack Galmitz ImPress New York, New York

Bout

Wild Horses (for Marilyn Monroe)

I finally found a book I could read more than once. It was all empty pages; the cover cardboard white; no title no author. !he paper was coarse so I could see it was pulp. !he glue that held it together had the look of horses" hooves. It was the saddest book.

#on"t Worry $or %nu &anes !his is not a poem. 'o one reads poems. !his is talking like you know unfinished sentences prompts calls

sometimes a sound out loud or out of place it won"t ta( you with sophisticated usage of language they"re words harmful helpful like people who use them whatever you know like gossip at a corner between two old friends who stab each other behind their backs like that. What did you e(pect ) more than the news* +ome hidden wisdom $rom an unknown tomb.

$or ,eorge -rumb !he sea without people. !he sky a darkening blue with darker blues within it. %bove the greenblack sea the light off the hori.on where children dead dream. !he sand becoming red brown

to the striking circular sound of violas plucked by efficacious fingers. !his is fro.en time. +low meaningful gestures) a 'oh play) a toy piano. % gust of wind that no bird brings to this briny shore. !hey say time enters somehow but without people I don/t see how. !he surf is a line of white at the edge of the sand like an oboe gone mad at the breaking of the sea the rough changes of the sky the blackening sand; but without a man. $lutes I think are final or nays. Maybe time collapses this day. Maybe the sea has memories) shades of sand mole crabs people dunking inside boats churning motors a drowning. Maybe time collapses like a temple ruin covered with vines choked slowly soon. $orming is the ne(t breaker the foam and further out another then another.

0pon a !ime +he had tattoos of stars colored in luminous white on her breasts along her back near her tailbone around her belly and down. When we turned off the lights she shone enough so that we could make love under their light. We were the nut and bolt that riveted held the universe up. I was a starga.er a star chaser a star cataloguer. +he was shiny paper and I an ink1et. We made art. It was not for sale. It was for life. When people said I should keep my feet on the earth I thought they must walk on all fours. What else is there but the silhouette of a woman %nd the burning brilliance of the stars to clutch.

!o the 2lack Hole3 I"m afraid I don"t know who else to write to. !he fire is brightest where the sun holds its hands. Where I was born is a long way from here. I"ll never get back there. % baritone voice booms in a language I don"t speak. Is home everywhere. It cannot be. It"s a mass or a revel of forest dwellers worshipping death. I"m not pre1udiced. I sing along. Help me. !he chorus gets louder and the trees tremble drop their leaves pull up their roots and run like deer. I run with them. I fall in 4uicksand. I sink. I"m being pulled in. When only my head is above the murk I begin to see I never did e(ist. It was a twist my brain the revolt of neurons. %ll the same help me. Help me. 'othing else is is there

With 2irth I scoop up the ocean 5 place it in a glass ball 5 put in my pants/ pocket to look at when I/m blue. I photograph the night entirely with a wide view camera and put it in my shirt pocket for a similar purpose. 6ou/d think a man with such riches would feel 1oyful; I worry I/ll be searched by the police and have to e(plain how I came by all this

!H7 WI'# !he wind parts the last red leaves from the tree to the grass. % newspaper saturated with last night"s rain I can see through three pages. I hear my neighbor beyond the fence; I recogni.e his footsteps. He mutters something about cats or skunks when he moves the pail for garbage. -ar wheels on the wet street I don"t turn my head. % mother with a car full of children she transports to school before work. !he clock is a bell calling worshippers home. I hear distance in a dog"s bark. % stranger passing a house when it doesn"t stop. 8n the street a couple stops. !hey"re con1oined twins. !he man snaps open a small leather bo(. !he woman"s face a fo(. It"s a silent movie. I guess the script they"re reciting. !he kettle whistles. I listen to the shuffle of my slippers on the carpet. !he sound of pouring water in the potted cup in soothing. +o is the steam. !he -hinese tea leaves are floating. It"s hot to hold but I manage. !hen the indistinguishable sounds of construction. % pounding drilling a bulldo.er tearing up soil and stones and the swivel and dropping it into a truck. 9umber being dumped* I take some pills to take a nap. 9ately there"s a pattern to it.

I"m somewhere I"ve never been and the trains and roads that take me home are no longer there. !here"s animals too. Much larger than usual. Huge. !hey"ve done no harm but their disproportionate si.e terrifies. +ince my wife is gone I live with white noise.

%ll !hat"s 9eft % conflagration put out by a gob of spit so ended desirousness e(cept on t.v. or in movies of skin where it carried on like the shades in lethe : an afterlife an unfocused light captured outlines against a screen and so it was for me in age : the refusal to 4uit : there being nothing else

8n a -ollage When we awoke 5 reali.ed we were not alone we were more alone. !hey say there was an age when we lived without considering things and then we could see that the stems of plants and trees were like our spines the spewing waterfall the moisture on our lips the grass the moss and shrubs our hairy arms legs se(ual parts. With this knowledge we learned to make a teepee that had no flat lines and the wind would not bring it down lodges and even pagodas and now we build towering buildings of glass and steel that reflect the sky the clouds sometimes birds scurrying home we made blankets clothes fences for animals mostly horses and in the end borders. It comes to this3 a line divides. 7verything is on either side. !he line that 1oins two points the line that makes creation the line that draws resemblances is also that which makes conflict and strife3 while two things unlike are potentially 1oined there is an upper and under where there is a line and with movement comes everything. !here"s no way around it. +o while we know that a human is like us we begin to practice distinction3 %frican scarification used distinct symbols for different tribes and %merican Indians used paint on their faces and ponies to make them something other than human fierce the mask of a god.

6et the rifles that shot lead in a straight line lead to the !rail of !ears reservations loss of traditions alcoholism and the snapping of the soul of nature to those who still lived in it as in the sacred.

-oast to -oast I dipped myself in your blood and bruise. 'ow I don"t know what to do. 6ou were five in a body cast abandoned abused by a male nurse on his rounds and you fro.e couldn"t move; -;6 80!. I don"t know what to do. 'ow you feel trapped) you were alone and unable to move) you were abandoned and in a cast that covered you but not through; I would have been a steel valve that let nothing through for you. !hink of it economically3 It reoccurred over over 5 you fro.e remember each time in the future hoping it would be removed by another or by you (that"s how us traumati.ed figure). 6ou like collage* I do. 6ou and I became drunkards addicts hoping to end the repetition3

we didn"t know each other3 but we both liked 1a.. +8 we"ll glue it together on backdrop paper in the center ,iotto"s 9/%scension in the right corner a still from +nake <it of 8livia de Havilland and #r. =ik dancing together. In the left maybe a newspaper clipping of the %lpher)2ethe),amow paper about the big bang theory. !hen beside the center the yellowed newspaper clipping 8f the 0nited 'ations adopting the 0niversal #eclaration of Human ;ights. Would that be all right* War broke out then between <alestinians and &ews and we weren"t born so we couldn"t choose. What should we do* We can combine the elements with fine black lines and small black globes and add in empty spaces lines crossing a point like faint stars the &ean Miro liked to do. 6ou can become a psychoanalyst3 that"s right for you and write the memoirs of your multiple suicide attempts and rapes that were renewed; I"ll become a poet a micropoet and write about you. What else is there to do* 6ou"ll stay on the West -oast and I"ll stay on the 7ast and what we share will unite !he 0nited +tates or maybe 1ust a few.

!he ;iggings I went down as water goes down to seek my level to stop staring at the sky as if moons and stars were mighty and the shrubs and rocks were wary. I went down to find her her eyes so blue I fell in and began to swim with fins and gills and wouldn"t come out until she pushed me out in time and I was hung upside down and slapped on the bottom and cried. When we married and I was told I could kiss the bride we were already wrapped in one another"s arms for we had known each other since the beginning of time that comes to pick you up when you fall down.

In a 2ird -age % man singing or chanting; people e(changing names; sundry sounds unrelated3 sounds of traffic nothing but action sculpted in space remain a moment; the sound of trees walls 4uarries 4uarters beggars night me amplified cacti a feather water strider randomly moving ) 'ew 6ork -ity was not built as a cage but as an aviary

0ntil I 2ecame the ;ain I was once young 5 walked down 2leecker +treet and West $ourth in ,reenwich >illage when the locust trees were yellow in the dark 5 the red brick building facades were the color of a heart. In the penumbra of love the street lamps tossed men and women camped on chairs round tables in the outdoor cafes like an assembly of gods. I followed the moon in its blue abandon across the fire)escapes and roofs tilted precariously like lovers who had had a few over the clock tower of the Womens" House of #etention where voices called to the darkness below ?hold me darling don"t let me go.@ 8ut into the battered garbage can doorways of the immigrant poor naked light bulbs on in the dingy halls children crawling under sagging beds love in ruins the streets shuttered in morning dew; nobody there save cats the si.e of 1aguars guarding the stone slab steps. !hen and there in a surfeit of love I became the rain.

8nce 0pon % !ime I went to %uschwit. to see what I would find; I went by train naturally and was reminded of a display

at <.+. A that 6oko 8no put up of a bo(car on tracks with a soundtrack inside of people"s moans and cries repeated as the sun shined. We huddled in the <olish cold under that famous metal sign that said Work Makes 8ne $ree that had been stolen recently and then recovered and re)soldered on. !he courtyard was bare of A.B million women and children and men who had perished there3 mostly &ews <oles ,ypsies +inti &ehovah Witnesses and +oviet <8Ws. !here the towers stood where guards had stood with rifles and the great swiveling lights that lit the grounds like a soccer field for killing that counted as a point. In one of the room are thousands of shoes and eyeglasses suitcases of those chosen to go3 I"m sure they missed their things when they e(changed them for uniforms; that I know. %nd there"s hair in one case) CD feet long) of those who were killed or died from starvation disease or overwork. !he gas chamber looks so ordinary like a stripped brick room where anything could be done a pottery)shop for instance or a barbershop would do. Hundreds of thousands were told to take showers and out came cyanide from pellets through punctured holes. %nd the crematorium ovens cold and cleaned looked like they once cooks things in instead of incinerating people. 'ow the grounds are covered with the ashes of the dead so you can"t be too careful because they"re wherever you step. !he +hoe ;epairman I did not kill god. I was busy that day working at my trade

repairing worn or torn shoes. I worked the entire day they made him drag a cross through the way of pain. I was nobody. 7ven my wife disobeyed and my son well he had little use for me. I had enough trouble already; my own people threatened to stone me if I didn"t keep the +abbath day. I had to work mending shoes so my family could eat and have clothes. <lease leave us alone. %nd if you don/t mind bring me some shoes.

How it Happened Why worry you"re an afterthought of a spring night your father spread your mother

like a folded paper sheet caught in a sudden rain a drop of ink spilled took a shape spread remained

If If only you had left taken your things banged shut the door instead of being there not talking anymore

!he $rame Is order maintained by margins are they the borders without which words would go on forever and include everything known and un known to us ) in this hour of withering blooming ) are they the frame that gives the impression of an end and a story

unfolding inside whether dimensional or otherwise could it be the device we needed lest we drifted off into shapelessness and infinity

!he cube of glass in that velvet case is an ice palace nothing less if you know &oseph -ornell as I do.

9ong %go !he cold and the waterfall embraced as I came upon this place unaware before that such things e(isted3 that the rushing fall of white water on the perpendicular rock wall could stop suddenly and remain perpetually motionless. It was a gift offered to me by friends who had found it in 'ew <alt. and thought I would en1oy it. +now bent the branches there was rime on the grass and we e(changed looks and laughed. It was like entering the woods and encountering bron.e cast animals or listening to the songs of mechanical birds hidden in the treetops.

9ong %go With a friend long ago we drove to 9ake 8ntario and I heard for the first time +amuel 2arber"s %dagio. !he road the sky the woods the small ponds on either side were merely a part. It swept everything along within it. We arrived and parked in town looked around ate lunch and then went through the park to the edge of the lake. !here I saw what was by far as close as the world came to the adagio3 the crested waves had fro.en before their break and remained that way perpetually. I had never seen such a scene where such a large body of water and its current could stop like in a dream.

White and green the fro.en waves stood. 2eyond was the flat and fro.en lake e(tending immobile for miles. %nd alone out there was a man on a chair with a small fishing pole dipped in a drilled hole and he remained as silent and patient as a Mohawk Indian. 8n the way home we listened again to 2arber"s %dagio and it was as fresh as if I had never heard it.

8n the tip of the crescent moon hang your coat else enter the subway at D %M and e(it the subway at E <M none the better for use

When my mother was dead I thought the nightmares and torments 8f being captive to her would end. Instead once she left the earth she took up residence in my head and her voice only got harsher.