I've taken a little dip and buried myself
and everybody else.
It was a little chilly for me.
I left right out.
I mean, actually, my apologies.
I know, there's a lot.
I actually have a new book out which, if it weren't $50,
I would grab.
In fact, because it's $50, I should grab it.
Grab in the other sense.
It's actually a real interesting book, a real patchwork
of dreaming then, I mean, it's amazing what-- the things
he brings together there.
But there are thickets of language in these French guys.
I mean, I don't know what they--
I think it's to define a terrain of exclusivity.
I'm half convinced that's what it's about, to keep us out.
Well, you'll see from some of my reservations
here on this airplane.
2,200-- that's my visual condition--
on 747-- that's almost an altitude.
There is rain on the glass but it all
disappears when I look toward the curve on the world.
The here and now is clear, I mean, so we can't see it.
In an airplane, chance encounters always ask,
so what are your poems about?
They were about their business and their father's business
and their monkey's uncle.
They're about how nothing is about, they're not about about.
This answer drives them back to the snack tray every time.
Phil Fenstermacher, for example, turns
up perfectly clear in my memory, perfectly attentive
to his Vasche Qui Rit, that saddest cheese.
And not an interlude while we commiserate,
it takes what might be years to open
life's array of incidental parcels,
mysteries of red strips, tips and strings,
the tricks of tampons, lips of band-aids,
perforated notches on detergent boxes,
spatial reasoning milk-carton quiz,
and subtle teleologies of toilet paper.
Mr. Fenstermacher is relieved to fill his mind
with the immediate and masterable challenge
of the cheese after his brief and chastening foray
into the social arts.
We part before we part.
Indeed, we part before we meet.
I sense the French philosophers nearby,
I hope not in the cockpit.
They are like to rock a plane and all the singers in it.
Contrary to popular belief, the vehicle is one, the tenors,
many.
These philosophers are fond of saying something
indecipherable meaning something like a moon.
We're sunk, we're sunk.
In our little container, our story of starting and stopping.
Just whose story is this anyway?
Out of my mind, whose words emerge?
Is there a self the self surpasses?
Look at your glasses, someone whispers.
Maybe the world is speckled by your carelessness
and not its nature.
Look at your glasses if you want to see.
Who says we're not alone?
The town down there grows huge, one tiny runway will engulf us.
Is the whisperer, Phil Fenstermacher,
getting a last word in before the craft alights?
I look at my glasses, I see what you mean, they're a sight.