WEBVTT

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Before I read, I'd like to say
that Gene Frumkin and I are

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going to dedicate our poetry
reading to you, of course,

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who were nice enough
to come here tonight.

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But also to Loujon
Press of Tucson,

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which is run by Jon Webb
and his wife, Gypsy Lou.

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And I'm sure you know, they
published The Outsider,

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the national literary magazine.

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They also have published
very fine hand bound,

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hand assembled works by
Henry Miller and others.

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And in a flood about
three weeks ago or so,

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they had much of their
materials destroyed by water.

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And in the spirit of
this type of editor,

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they're going to be out in
time for the double issue

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of The Outsider.

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And this kind of
catastrophe, plus a coupling

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of major surgery, both of them
in and out of the hospital,

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kind of an indomitable
spirit, and nothing

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is going to stop them.

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We'd like to dedicate
the reading to them.

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I'm going to spring
something on you

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tonight, a new poem, which
I haven't done before

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and which I'm still working on.

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It's called "Teufelsdreck."

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Excuse me while I--

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I'll start off with
a drink, I think.

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"Teufelsdreck" in
the epigraph states,

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written after being
asked by my wife

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to purchase her a
laughing Airedale.

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And I think this might need
explanation at this point.

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Teufelsdreck I stole from Sartor
Resartus by Thomas Carlyle.

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And in German, it
means devil's dung.

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I've been reading the
book for a couple of weeks

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and at that same time,
about halfway through it,

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my wife asked me to purchase
her a laughing Airedale,

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which is rather strange.

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I got to think about
it in conjunction

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with the idea of
Teufelsdreck, the kind

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of fictitious German idealist,
his attempt to work his way up

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from an attempted suicide
up transcendental letter

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to his belief in life again.

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And I find a kind of parallel
between his predicament, which

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is also Carlyle's predicament,
the predicament we

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have of contemporary society.

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And so this poem is
an anti-military poem.

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It's an anti-war poem.

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It's a kind of anti-mythology
and anti-ideology

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as such type of poem.

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And when I blame
Teufelsdreck, I'm

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blaming him as perhaps in a
way Thoreau blamed and made

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a confrontation with the
tax man who came for him.

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You can't fight against a
government, a nebulous term.

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You can't go to
Washington and bang

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on the doors at the White House.

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And so I blame Teufelsdreck and
a kind of naturalistic world

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in which god doesn't
seem to appear to us.

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I will blame a kind
of ideological man.

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He should become the
symbol of the ideology.

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There are other themes running
through here, I should say.

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The use of symbolism of
the light and the dark

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where we have a blind girl in
there who is perhaps parallel

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to us, who in a
kind of blindness

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must either reject the
political leaders we have

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or approve of them.

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And I find in this
type of election year

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that we're again voting for
the lesser of two evils.

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This is my statement
on how you feel.

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We're voting again for
the lesser of two evils

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as at least I did back in '64.

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Bob Truly, a couple of weeks
ago at a poetry reading,

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wanted to know if George
Washington were the lesser

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of two evils in his day.

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And we are surely faced
with this situation now.

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The incidents that are here--

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I'm not going to read it
as a five part meditative

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poem that is broken down.

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I won't read the
numbers, but it is--

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on hearing it, you can't
tell what the structure is.

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I mentioned I'm still
working on the thing,

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and I don't know how the
final structure will work out.

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But it is meant to be a
five part meditative poem.

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I've been studying
Donne lately, and I

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like the way in which poems
are dealing with a topic.

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And they break it up with a
kind of meditation per day.

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We're not going to
handle it that way.

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I'll try to get
through it tonight.

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"Teufelsdreck,"
written after being

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asked by my wife to purchase
her a laughing Airedale.

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"Teufelsdreck, old devil's
dung, Diogenes by first name,

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rambling the marketplace
in broad daylight

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with a lantern flung
before all faces,

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searching the honest man.

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Two legged fatherless mammal,
devil's dung filthy creature

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at both opening.

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You said it yourself.

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You could have gone to bedlam
or written satanic poems

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or blown your brains
out with a gun.

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This life leaves us little else.

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I've seen a dogfish balloon
been exploded with a knife prick

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to the cheers of
children, a cat strung up,

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burning flesh and gasoline
before a hobo's sexual fear.

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A girl of 12, her flesh
fried, stewed, pot-boiled,

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and eaten by the hired man.

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In court, he insisted
that she died a virgin.

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Dog, poor dog, weary.

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We assume the animal, but
even the monkey who laughs

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only seems to an imitation.

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No dog can screw up the face
and chuckle in the throat.

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To laugh like dark men in
woods on winter nights,

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catching the sound on
the wind to say, laugh,

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rattle the throat.

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Devil's dung, spirit and dung,
only men can murder and laugh."

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The laughter that I'm
talking about in this poem

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is a specific kind of laughter.

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Obviously, all laughter
is not perverse.

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But I'm talking about the
specific kind in the way

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that Hawthorne uses it, the way
that the devil is symbolized

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by the terrible laughter
because he is damned man.

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It is this kind of perverse
laugh that the animal can't

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perform obviously, not
only because of physiology,

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but because they don't have
the mind capable of thinking

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of perverse acts and
then performing them

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and then laughing about it.

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So this is the
quality of laughter

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that is mentioned
here in the poem.

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"In a willow-laced
grotto, a procession

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of brown serge monks, pitter
pat, pitter pat to the grave,

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carting an Italian
monk who never laughed.

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He renounced the
devil beneath the itch

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of hair shirt,
the last [? sew ?]

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around the gut so tight,
they slit the ingrown flesh

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to cleave the rope.

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The belly laugh would
not fly into the mouth.

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He kept himself insulated
against the movement of flesh,

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thirsting for the
depth of a woman.

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Devil's dung, old
nature lover, we

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fling off both
flesh and the sole

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with a desperate
lunge for the grave.

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Sing, sing, brothers
and carry each

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in hand a taper to a loom in
the light to the July afternoon

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at 100 degrees in the garden.

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Below the surface of their
chanting, I swam, breath

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breaking, deep toward heaven,
the other way, to wished off

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coins in the well, while
goldfish rubbed me gently

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as a touch of a summer
girl pours awake

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and throbbing for years
to come beyond the size

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of that Catholic wishing
well, of pennies,

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dimes, quarters, halves staring
up presidential and huge

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in the clear spring-fed waters.

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So deep and pumping, lungs
held before the horrible vision

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as god's eyes scanned
the garden and saw

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the stations of the cross
cut in the agony of each rock

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and a boy swimming down heavy
beneath the bronze virgin

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turning green.

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This was the
offering in reverse,

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to take god's money
and his wishes back.

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$2.00, old Teufelsdreck. $3.50
for a new pump air gun to shoot

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a share of songbirds.

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I surface with the holy
loot and dripped a trail

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through the woods and sat
stiff-faced scared by the banks

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of the Merrimack, gun
and air and birds,

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bleeding robins fall, and
hand touch the throbbing side

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found death and terror there.

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Teufelsdreck,
absentee landlord, you

00:07:14.810 --> 00:07:18.140 align:middle line:84%
stole beside my bed to whisper
the wrong prayers those winter

00:07:18.140 --> 00:07:20.540 align:middle line:84%
nights when the fluorescent
Jesus hid his skeleton

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behind my bed board, about
death and dogs that never

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laugh to imitate
the way men kill.

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This is the wish that
money could not buy.

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As I moved onto flesh
and a woman's game,

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finding the movement within
her, and she running blood red

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pleading that all the
womanhood stoppered,

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she laughed at the defense
against the suffering

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her body would bloom at
our beginning, at our end.

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And goldfish swam in the
corners of her green eyes

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turning bronze.

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But later, someone
else swam upstream

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to swell her womb with child.

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Children are starving
in dark Africa.

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Napalm falls over the Orient.

00:07:56.720 --> 00:08:00.890 align:middle line:84%
Under the Capitol dome, the
sacrosanct speak sacrosanct.

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Old lover I just remembered,
I did not see goldfish

00:08:04.730 --> 00:08:06.050 align:middle line:90%
in the corners of your eyes.

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It was a death of death I saw.

00:08:08.540 --> 00:08:11.420 align:middle line:84%
Love and feeling died
like a cancerous dog.

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No dog shall lift his shaggy
head in the full light of day

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and laugh at the wheel of sun.

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Rene Char, callous
poet from Jersey,

00:08:20.510 --> 00:08:24.260 align:middle line:84%
who believe in the power of
beauty to right all wrong,

00:08:24.260 --> 00:08:25.220 align:middle line:90%
you said it.

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We shall surpass the
pitiful dumb beasts

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or be humbled by
their innocence.

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Whose child shall die like
a dog in Biafra [INAUDIBLE]

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by Chicago?

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Somewhat out of life, hung,
drying skeletons dance

00:08:37.549 --> 00:08:41.240 align:middle line:84%
in a medium of shadow beyond
straightforward sight.

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We are all rooted in
dust, out of time.

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In Boston beneath the willows,
the swan boats of the common

00:08:49.310 --> 00:08:51.620 align:middle line:84%
are entered like
hammocks of repose.

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The children languidly wave.

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We wave.

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Up front, tots tilt
nicely as if crossing

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the still waters of Lethe.

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Blind child, I sat to you
in the swan boat basket

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and tell you to test
the water if you

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must believe all we tell you.

00:09:07.370 --> 00:09:10.580 align:middle line:84%
The captain continues to pump
the treadmill as you flounder

00:09:10.580 --> 00:09:12.830 align:middle line:90%
five feet off our shore.

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This is no mythic swan that
takes you across unsure water.

00:09:16.580 --> 00:09:18.380 align:middle line:84%
Far off or rumbling
in the manger

00:09:18.380 --> 00:09:20.960 align:middle line:84%
as the kid kicks in
his mother's womb,

00:09:20.960 --> 00:09:23.840 align:middle line:84%
the god is loosed in
howling past the offertory

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and the wine.

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Blind girl, you live your asleep
in the nave of darkness, waking

00:09:29.210 --> 00:09:32.780 align:middle line:84%
hours and eclipse of love
for the repository of truth

00:09:32.780 --> 00:09:36.050 align:middle line:84%
as tabernacle the mea
culpas with a key.

00:09:36.050 --> 00:09:38.390 align:middle line:84%
Child, when you shut
your ears, your room,

00:09:38.390 --> 00:09:40.280 align:middle line:84%
against the harness
of this dark,

00:09:40.280 --> 00:09:43.430 align:middle line:84%
we will rejoice your
closing up as soul and body

00:09:43.430 --> 00:09:45.350 align:middle line:90%
die in each other's arms.

00:09:45.350 --> 00:09:49.530 align:middle line:84%
If they cannot preach
against, we will mourn.

00:09:49.530 --> 00:09:51.560 align:middle line:84%
We are the pawns
and the gods demise,

00:09:51.560 --> 00:09:54.740 align:middle line:84%
dumb animals like army dogs
who deliver battle messages

00:09:54.740 --> 00:09:58.790 align:middle line:84%
and die, the jaws blown
open, intestines hanging.

00:09:58.790 --> 00:10:02.300 align:middle line:84%
This is a suit of clothes men
wear, the uniform with arms

00:10:02.300 --> 00:10:05.240 align:middle line:84%
stripes we are asked to
die for, old devil's dung.

00:10:05.240 --> 00:10:09.320 align:middle line:90%


00:10:09.320 --> 00:10:13.220 align:middle line:84%
On a hill of childhood, a framed
log cabin floor large enough

00:10:13.220 --> 00:10:17.810 align:middle line:84%
to hide five from the plans
of elders against intruders,

00:10:17.810 --> 00:10:20.750 align:middle line:84%
a two pound coffee can
filled with dog dung, piss,

00:10:20.750 --> 00:10:24.950 align:middle line:84%
rotten eggs, set with pride
before the August sun.

00:10:24.950 --> 00:10:28.700 align:middle line:84%
Each day we sniffed the brew to
find our own worst enemy as we

00:10:28.700 --> 00:10:30.410 align:middle line:90%
puked our guts on that hill.

00:10:30.410 --> 00:10:33.170 align:middle line:84%
And when it grew inhuman,
we buried the can

00:10:33.170 --> 00:10:35.510 align:middle line:90%
amid ceremony and prayer.

00:10:35.510 --> 00:10:39.230 align:middle line:84%
Tonight north of here, atomic
bombs blistered the hill

00:10:39.230 --> 00:10:42.440 align:middle line:84%
and wait to be discharged by
the elders of state who have not

00:10:42.440 --> 00:10:44.360 align:middle line:84%
learned to empty their
guts of all the hate

00:10:44.360 --> 00:10:47.750 align:middle line:84%
to save either the
grotto or the world.

00:10:47.750 --> 00:10:51.230 align:middle line:84%
Cousin Richard, I write to
your memory and fear your soul

00:10:51.230 --> 00:10:52.580 align:middle line:90%
is absent tonight.

00:10:52.580 --> 00:10:57.710 align:middle line:84%
We are locked in on this planet
by the absentee landlord,

00:10:57.710 --> 00:11:01.400 align:middle line:84%
idealist with eyes on the stars
and your feet in the well.

00:11:01.400 --> 00:11:04.040 align:middle line:84%
Teufelsdreck, there was
only a fire-eaten valley

00:11:04.040 --> 00:11:06.560 align:middle line:84%
the other side of the
promised mountain.

00:11:06.560 --> 00:11:09.200 align:middle line:84%
Cousin Richard, you
studied the military radar

00:11:09.200 --> 00:11:11.060 align:middle line:84%
and watched each
wormy blip up here

00:11:11.060 --> 00:11:12.890 align:middle line:90%
and explode like a heartbeat.

00:11:12.890 --> 00:11:15.110 align:middle line:84%
In practice, the
misplaced grenade

00:11:15.110 --> 00:11:17.000 align:middle line:90%
blew your organs into light.

00:11:17.000 --> 00:11:18.860 align:middle line:84%
They searched with
cocky pails and put

00:11:18.860 --> 00:11:21.380 align:middle line:84%
you back together
again, for nothing

00:11:21.380 --> 00:11:23.450 align:middle line:90%
could touch your mustering out.

00:11:23.450 --> 00:11:25.580 align:middle line:84%
The soldiers fired
well-oiled guns at something

00:11:25.580 --> 00:11:26.840 align:middle line:90%
I fail to see.

00:11:26.840 --> 00:11:29.600 align:middle line:84%
God, did they wound
you or your son?

00:11:29.600 --> 00:11:32.480 align:middle line:84%
In the flag folded for
auntie, does each star

00:11:32.480 --> 00:11:36.290 align:middle line:84%
depict a son fragmented by
war games in sunny Carolina?

00:11:36.290 --> 00:11:37.670 align:middle line:90%
Are 10 per star?

00:11:37.670 --> 00:11:38.990 align:middle line:90%
Are 20?

00:11:38.990 --> 00:11:42.950 align:middle line:84%
Cousin, your dog tag hangs a
shrine in the front parlor.

00:11:42.950 --> 00:11:45.720 align:middle line:90%


00:11:45.720 --> 00:11:49.320 align:middle line:84%
We return from the grave,
high altitude and fast,

00:11:49.320 --> 00:11:53.010 align:middle line:84%
moving where no birds dare fly
this far inland from Boston.

00:11:53.010 --> 00:11:54.600 align:middle line:90%
This is to be a smooth flight.

00:11:54.600 --> 00:11:56.730 align:middle line:84%
The captain has
promised his best.

00:11:56.730 --> 00:12:00.000 align:middle line:84%
Dressed in blue with a golden
eagle, he does not pray, too.

00:12:00.000 --> 00:12:03.060 align:middle line:84%
He makes you believe this is a
Sunday drive with solid ground

00:12:03.060 --> 00:12:04.170 align:middle line:90%
beneath.

00:12:04.170 --> 00:12:06.630 align:middle line:84%
Then why the fastened
belts drifting our ship

00:12:06.630 --> 00:12:08.820 align:middle line:90%
toward an old wreckage.

00:12:08.820 --> 00:12:10.800 align:middle line:84%
I look through the
portal, but can scarcely

00:12:10.800 --> 00:12:14.850 align:middle line:84%
see the goldfish, the
silver coin, the green eyes.

00:12:14.850 --> 00:12:19.000 align:middle line:84%
It is just occurred to me that
this planet is to be condemned.

00:12:19.000 --> 00:12:21.120 align:middle line:90%
I peer out, but no god stirs.

00:12:21.120 --> 00:12:23.705 align:middle line:84%
Teufelsdreck, you
laugh the final laugh

00:12:23.705 --> 00:12:25.080 align:middle line:84%
and whisper that
the oil has been

00:12:25.080 --> 00:12:26.490 align:middle line:90%
extinguished in the lantern.

00:12:26.490 --> 00:12:28.230 align:middle line:84%
The honest man in
the marketplace,

00:12:28.230 --> 00:12:29.850 align:middle line:84%
if he ever wrestled
in his bones,

00:12:29.850 --> 00:12:34.080 align:middle line:84%
lies bleached white in his grave
beyond our garden of shadows.

00:12:34.080 --> 00:12:36.630 align:middle line:84%
Brother Francis, your
serge uniform molded,

00:12:36.630 --> 00:12:39.090 align:middle line:84%
your stations of the cross
stand like compass points

00:12:39.090 --> 00:12:41.790 align:middle line:90%
flickering out one by one.

00:12:41.790 --> 00:12:43.710 align:middle line:84%
Forgive me if I
fail to swim down

00:12:43.710 --> 00:12:47.190 align:middle line:84%
heavy to the font of silver
to steal the father's

00:12:47.190 --> 00:12:49.230 align:middle line:90%
wealth for murder's sake.

00:12:49.230 --> 00:12:51.330 align:middle line:84%
I can almost spy
the ground where

00:12:51.330 --> 00:12:53.430 align:middle line:84%
dogs bay at the moon
to hint that the way up

00:12:53.430 --> 00:12:54.900 align:middle line:90%
is the way down.

00:12:54.900 --> 00:12:57.240 align:middle line:84%
But this is our winged
tomb, pressurized

00:12:57.240 --> 00:12:59.640 align:middle line:84%
against the elements,
stocked with someone else's

00:12:59.640 --> 00:13:02.310 align:middle line:90%
fruits and meat and liquor.

00:13:02.310 --> 00:13:04.900 align:middle line:84%
We must fly high and
fast beyond ourselves.

00:13:04.900 --> 00:13:07.740 align:middle line:84%
We must eat our own flesh,
drink our own blood,

00:13:07.740 --> 00:13:11.550 align:middle line:84%
and be whole again beyond
all eternity and mumbo jumbo.

00:13:11.550 --> 00:13:14.870 align:middle line:84%
I want off this
side of the bar."

00:13:14.870 --> 00:13:18.329 align:middle line:90%