By other poets - Psychoanalysis: An Elegy, Jack Spicer 1925-1965

Psychoanalysis: An Elegy

                                     Jack Spicer 1925-1965

What are you thinking about?

I am thinking of an early summer.

I am thinking of wet hills in the rain

Pouring water.  Shedding it

Down empty acres of oak and manzanita

Down to the old green brush tangled in the sun,

Greasewood, sage, and spring mustard.

Or the hot wind coming down from Santa Ana

Driving the hills crazy,

A fast wind with a bit of dust in it

Bruising everything and making the seed sweet.

Or down in the city where the peach trees

Are awkward as young horses,

And there are kites caught on the wires

Up above the street lamps,

And the storm drains are all choked with dead branches.

 

What are you thinking?

 

I think that I would like to write a poem that is slow as a summer

As slow getting started

As 4th of July somewhere around the middle of the second stanza

After a lot of unusual rain

California seems long in the summer.

I would like to write a poem as long as California

And as slow as a summer.

Do you get me, Doctor?  It would have to be as slow

As the very tip of summer.

As slow as the summer seems

On a hot day drinking beer outside Riverside

Or standing in the middle of a white-hot road

Between Bakersfield and Hell

Waiting for Santa Claus.

 

 

What are you thinking now?

 

I'm thinking that she is very much like California.

When she is still her dress is like a roadmap.  Highways

Traveling up and down her skin

Long empty highways

With the moon chasing jackrabbits across them

On hot summer nights.

I am thinking that her body could be California

And I a rich Eastern tourist

Lost somewhere between Hell and Texas

Looking at a map of a long, wet, dancing California

That I have never seen.

Send me some penny picture-postcards, lady,

Send them.

One of each breast photographed looking

Like curious national monuments,

One of your body sweeping like a three-lane highway

Twenty-seven miles from a night's lodging

In the world's oldest hotel.

 

What are you thinking?

 

I am thinking of how many times this poem

Will be repeated.  How many summers

Will torture California

Until the damned maps burn

Until the mad cartographer

Falls to the ground and possesses

The sweet thick earth from which he has been hiding.

 

What are you thinking now?

 

I am thinking that a poem could go on forever.

 



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Reflections on Self and Other: Embracing Paradoxes

This is not a poem, nor is it written by a human... it is the output of GPT4 when I first asked it to write odes to A) Umwelt; B) Umgebung; C) Innerwelt and then to reflect on the paradoxes and dualities of self-other in that regard: Reflections on Self and Other: Embracing Paradoxes In the intricate tapestry of existence, a dance unfolds between the realms of self and other, where dualities and paradoxes intertwine. Within the realm of Umwelt, individual perceptions shape our understanding of the world. Each of us holds a unique lens through which we interpret our surroundings, yet within these boundaries, we feel an inherent yearning for connection with others. It is the paradox of embracing our own distinctiveness while recognizing the shared humanity that binds us. Umgebung, the stage upon which life plays out, encompasses diverse landscapes and environments. Mountains, rivers, cities, and forests create a multitude of Umgebungen, each offering a distinct backdrop for our individua
Read more

Moving the Bones - Rick Barot

 During our hiatus as an active weekly group, generating running multi-voice poems, I was struck with this particular one from Poem-a-Day which moved me and I thought to share it here: Moving the Bones Rick Barot There are too many ancestors, so we are gathering their bones. The poor ones, their graves broken by the roots of trees. The ones whose headstones have been weathered
Read more

What a Stone Feels

<this is the first assignment I wrote for the Paul Kingsnorth - " Rewild Your Words " online course we took in December which is how our Poetry/Writing Sunday Salon got started. I'm CC:ing the other participants so they can see by example how to post their own work to this blog via e-mail> On my property there are many river-stones that were almost surely brought here by previous humans.   I could have closed my eyes, my ears, my nose and groped around until I found them, channeling Helen Keller perhaps... but I did not... I sought out a particularly apt stone for this purpose, with my eyes and my memory.  I have hefted these stones before and even know what they smell and taste like.    I passed over the pile brought in for the purpose of facing a wall, each about fist-sized... not too large to throw effectively but too large for a sling or slingshot.   I avoided the ones marking the good-dogs grave near the entrance to the property.  The stone I choose requi
Read more