No Jazz, No Salsa, No Ska

They are elsewhere, our cherished carpets, 
our floors as naked as our intellects. 

The floor is barren. The paneling is bare. 
Stark is ultimate as we can see. 

In this dour climate, the empty frames
house walls that lack color. They are boxes

without soul or, as it turns, without sound. 
They have rails which edge a shrine of silence

that simply waves its empty hand. 
The salt lamp is an orb extending out, 

like hearing floating deftly within. 
Lady beetles slowly mop the ceiling. 

It is nearly winter. The floorboards are dry. 
Their tree rings have been frozen in decaying time. 

Here in this loneliness, a vacuum, 
within these jittery ejaculations, 

whines out an empty gasp, 
ghost-adage of the hallowed's hangover. 

And here, in this stark, we come to lose
the final comfort of that ultimate. 

The squirrel aches as he flits past the sill. 
Dark is the indifference in his iris. 

There is the solace for the loneliness, 
but fleeting, in another place.

If you feel like you’re in the mood for more poetry today, this poem is actually a re-Vision of a poem by Wallace Stevens called “No Possum, No Sop, No Taters.”

Not my favorite Stevens poem, but everything he wrote is worth reading.

Obviously, it was a poem with a memorable enough title that it came back to me, unprovoked.

I thought of my title’s echo while walking, considering the way in which all of the radio I hear at work seems more or less stuck in rock and hip-hop, lamenting all of the color of other forms of music.

I then sat with the Stevens poem and literally re-wrote it line for line, maintaining its form and grammar, merely changing the words.

While I consider this poem to be a throwaway exercise, I am happy with how it feels empty and lifeless as the content it describes.

That said, a friend pointed out that despite the loneliness and isolation described in the poem, there is life there — beetles and squirrels make appearances reminding the speaker that all is not dead. (I wanted to use the term Harmonia axyridis to name what are called “Asian lady beetles” because it’s beautiful — but “lady beetles” eventually won because the phrase is more common, and also fit the sounds with “slowly mop.”)

I also like the way in which the life rings of the trees that made the floorboards continue to remind the speaker of the ubiquity of organic growth, even in this climate.

I also like that the speaker has lost solace in the ultimate, and seems to resign himself to continuing to participate in the co-creation of the cosmos he shares with his fellow beings.

I hope that all of you are having a good weekend so far, and that much good comes to you.

Appreciatively,

Aaron