[hypergraphia]

his work was unintentionally introduced to me when i was asked by my employer-friend (friend-employer) to go run an errand. he told me to bring back lehman’s collection of poems “the daily mirror” from the library. out of sheer curiosity, i flipped through the collection and immediately took a liking to the writing style; it was also similar to that of my employer-friend - to the point, clever and wonderfully deadpan.

here are a couple that i have taken a special liking to:

January 14

Let’s play Word Golf you go from
“love” to “hate” in fourteen lines
of from “kiss” to “fuck” one letter
at a time, like going from soft
to soot to loot to loft to lift
to life, that’s my idea but Anne
Winters wants us to write a poem
ending with the line “and I die
of thirst at the fountain’s rim”
so of course everyone does both
the snow like sea foam
surrounding a marooned sailor
stretched out before me, and how easy
it is for that mariner to swim
to shore a desert island where
he explored every inch on his belly
looking for water and dies
of thirst at the fountain’s rim

~

Ode to Modern Art

Come on in and stay a while
I’ll photograph you emerging from the revolving door
like Frank O’Hara dating the muse of modern art
Talking about the big Pollock show is better
than going to it on a dismal Saturday afternoon
when my luncheon partner is either the author or the subject
of The Education of Henry Adams at a hard-to-get-
a-table-at restaurant on Cornelia Street
just what is chaos theory anyway
I’m not sure but it helps explain “Autumn Rhythm”
the closest thing to chaos without crossing the border
I think you should write that book on Eakins and also the one
on nineteenth century hats the higher the hat the sweller the toff
and together we will come up with Mondrian in the grid of Manhattan
Gerald Murphy’s “Still Life with Wasp” and the best Caravaggio in the country
in Kansas City well it’s been swell, see you in Cleveland April 23
The reason time goes faster as you grow older is that each day
is a tinier proportion of the totality of days in your life

I wish I could swim in the toilet with my family.
I wish I had a silly sister.
I wish everyone was kind and polite in this world
so you wouldn’t be bullied
or miserable.
I wish boys were dumb. I wish girls didn’t exist.
I wish a small meteor would fall
in that cup.

I wish I wasn’t much of a weakling myself;
I wish I had a force field. I wish
everything was free, so there would be
no beggars in the world. I wish
the light could be many popcorns. I
wish there were football fields everywhere.
I wish boys were not everything bad.

I wish all of the girls went to jail
and had 10,000,000 teeth. I wish the world
was musical. I wish the world
wasn’t polluted.

I wish my mom was a magician. I wish my dad
wouldn’t die. I wish boys and girls
could get along with each other,
because I don’t want to fight.
I wish I had wisdom.
I wish it was always autumn:
autumn is my favourite season.

I wish boys went to Jupiter to get more stupider;
I wish girls went to colledge to get more knowledge.
I wish Henry had a girlfriend.

I wish I could freeze time. I wish people
wouldn’t think I’m weird.
It makes me sad. I wish
I could end this poem
somehow. Finally,
I wish this poem was good.

–
the poem is a collage of many ‘i wish’ poems written by kids who were taking classes at the tutorial center i was working at last summer. i was in a bleak state of mind at the time, but in retrospect i am glad i was around those kids briefly. they’re angels.

many thanks to H for putting together this collage, and for sharing.

Liebes-Lied

Wie soll ich meine Seele halten, daß
sie nicht an deine rührt? Wie soll ich sie
hinheben über dich zu andern Dingen?
Ach gerne möchte ich sie bei irgendetwas
Verlorenem im Dunkel unterbringen
an einer fremden stillen Stelle, die
nicht weiterschwingt, wenn diene Tiefen schwingen.
Doch alles, was uns anrührt, dich und mich,
nimmt uns zusammen wie ein Bogenstrich,
die aus zwei Saiten eine Stimme zieht.
Auf welches Instrument sind wir gespannt?
Und welcher Geiger hat uns in der Hand?
O süßes Lied.

- Rainer Maria Rilke 

Love Song

How shall I hold on to my soul, so that
it does not touch yours? How shall I lift
it gently up over you on to other things?
I would so very much like to tuck it away
among long lost objects in the dark,
in some quiet, unknown place, somewhere
which remains motionless when your depths resound.
And yet everything which touches us, you and me,
takes us together like a single bow,
drawing out from two strings but one voice.
On which instrument are we strung?
And which violinist holds us in his hand?
O sweetest of songs.

- Rainer Maria Rilke