Kathmandu Oracle

Artistic Statement

I’ve never thought of myself as a natural poet, or a poet of any sort. At times I’ve been intimidated by the contemporary poetry I find in some bookshops. I’ve found it hard to “enter” it, to live in that world on the page. Too often the poems I read felt too self-consciously poetic, too strained. This is hardly true of all poets, and I’ve read a great deal and enjoyed a great deal of poetry over the years. And I suppose it was in that realization, coming to understand that there wasn’t “a poetry” but “many poetries” that allowed me to find some kind of voice for myself. These purely started out as words on a page and “became” poems somehow without me really thinking about it. That was a very freeing process and it allowed me to discard notions of value or meaning and simply submerge myself in how the language itself led me from line to line. In “Kathmandu Oralcle” I had no idea where this thought of finding a penny on a street would lead, and that it lead from Brooklyn to Kathmandu was a great surprise to me. And with “Or Why Or How” I walked inside after building the second planter and wrote the first line and followed it to where it went.

Kathmandu Oracle

I found a penny on the street
It didn’t speak to me
This is what it didn’t say
You can’t win them all, but lose one
You lose them all. The subway’s
Fucked again. Shuttle buses
Replace the G. No stops in Brooklyn
They go to Kathmandu. Real screw-up
At the MTA. I asked the driver
What’s the big idea, taking us to
Kathmandu? Stay on or get off
He said. That’s the way it is
No shades of gray, do it or don’t
We live in binary times. Cut a long story
Short, it’s not so different here
Except instead of bodegas we have stupas
And instead of Manhattan, we see
The Himalayas. I’ll send a postcard
When I’m settled. One thing is, the pennies talk
Quite a racket from the pockets
I heard one say the other day
It was losing faith in structuralism
Two sides to everything? Wasn’t that
A tad neat? A picture of the universe
As self-portrait. I would’ve stopped
To chat, but these are busy alleys
And who has time to argue with
A penny on questions of duality
And mind. I’ll tell you one thing
More, I climbed one of the lesser peaks
Stuck my flag in, the mountain groaned
Another one, it said, with the voice
Of Eeyore in the Disney movies
We had a tête à tête, the upshot
Being this. The world is cold,
The air is thin, where are these fabled
Beaches of Goa and the Maldives,
Who wears bikinis, gets fucked in
The surf, who drinks martinis by the dockside?
I’ll spread the news, I promised
Bring word down from the mountain
I was already on my knees
Chiselling with a penknife
Eeyore’s oracle into a tablet
Cut from ice

Or Why Or How

I built a second planter
They look like tombs
Side by side
Mine larger, yours smaller
As befits our bodies
We’ll bury ourselves
When the time comes
Or before who knows
A form of retirement
Perhaps
Or seclusion
Or withdrawal
Or when things get heavy
Or we’re too old to walk
Or when the beer’s gone
Or the wine gone
Or the world too irritating
Or the shows all been watched
Or Netflix down for a week
Or the beach too crowded
Or our local’s shuttered
Or the books read
Or nothing much left in the fridge
Or the coffee’s out
Or I’ve ripped my jeans again and I’m too lazy to mend them
Or something else
Because
Why then or then or then
So why not
Weeds will erupt
From our chests
They’ll tell a story
Its beginning middle and end
Forgotten because who remembers
Or why or how and who forgets
Or why or how