Tony TOWLE
Hypotheses
Imagine turning the clock back
to when there were no clocks,
and then back another hour and a half
just to make sure. Imagine the unique insights
your wristwatch will give you, even though it is running slow.
Imagine the people staring at your funny clothes.
This brochure invites us to imagine
reliving the terrors of World War II,
but the noise is deafening and it is becoming hazardous
so we stop. Instead, let's imagine the bright blue Mesopotamian sky
and the peaceful Baghdad of January 1258
with the Mongols out there in the distance.
Imagine trying to explain to the Caliph
what's going to happen when they get there,
that his grand vizier is double-crossing him,
that the city's inhabitants will be butchered,
that he will be mocked at a banquet and then he and his sons
will be sewn into carpets and trampled by the Mongol horsemen.
The descriptions are about to get unimaginably gruesome
so imagine that you are a peacefully falling leaf that is, like,
you know, floating in a gentle present-day breeze, or whatever,
while there I am, real or imagined, inside behind the window,
continuing to unravel the sizeless sweater of the unknown
into countless piles of yarn. I wander off to seek advice
from the symbolically obscure but kindly old welder, whose torch
like an indulged nephew or sputtering oracle perched on his remaining knee
spits out an indefatigable stream of chromatic perceptions.
And within the disappearing sparks of an evanescent subtext
you are imagined as just a normal person
facing an enormous stack of bills
that require payment for everything you've ever imagined.
Imagine you have the money to take care of them all!
Imagine what will happen when they find out you don't,
and they resort to the unimaginable: sending real fear
to infiltrate your imaginings.
Self-Improvement Sketch
I emerge from the gray, viscous, nauseating
but informative environment, having picked,
as per the generous offer of only pennies per day,
the brains of today's business leaders.
Now, with a basket full of quivering, spongy
and edifying tidbits, I have little choice
after 40 years of fooling around
but finally to get down to business.
Tableau
The smoke curls steadily upward.
The work of Attila the Hun? No, his "Other,"
Flotilda the Hunnie, cigarette dangling from her lips, braids
bleached in historicity and descending
from the Pannonian past
into the sink of the Pennsylvanian present
where she washes the dishes
to the violins of the rainswept interstate.
On the right, Attila is pulling up in the driveway
and there on his right, the more conservative hordes.
The River of Ice
We punctuate
the giant river of ice. We only
can survive here. No—
here, it is only we
that can survive. We
are the grammarians
of the tundra. We are cold
but we are correct. Our teeth
may chatter but we will punctuate
the frozen river.
The Investigation
I found myself in the Great Central Library reachable through the labyrinthine
passages from either the East Side or Sixth Avenue Subways. I had forgotten all
about this enormous complex because I had spent time here only once, in one of
the larger rooms that was further ahead, for research in a job that didn't work out
in a dream some years before. But now I was walking purposefully among the
high and dusty bookcases that had no visible organization, and suddenly in front
of me on a shelf at eye-level were a number of well-known poetry reference books.
This orange-covered volume I have at home, but this one, A Measure of Poets,
I knew about but had never bought because, to my great distress, I was not in it.
Nonetheless, I took it down, on the possibility
that somehow I might have been included in the index. "If
I'm not in this thing at all," I thought to myself, "then that's it . . . " leaving the
implication unverbalized. But there were indeed several citations about me, quite
a few, in fact, references in articles about other poets, and more appeared as
I looked. And then there was a large photograph I had completely forgotten about:
a long-distance shot taken in the middle of an invented Grand Central Station
that was part of the enormous subway-library complex where I was at that very
moment. I am the only occupant of a large, circular, leather banquette, and
am leaning back with my right arm extended over the empty platform behind
the seats in a staged and allegorical pose I recalled having to hold uncomfortably
long for the camera; and I am in the act of tossing from a cup objects like dice,
which the camera has caught in mid-air.
Around me was my "family" - two children,
actors, in front on the right, and a woman I didn't recognize, gathered together for
the purpose of the tableau, and a young man a little way off who was supposed
to be my brother, and who moved himself a few steps further to the left as I examined
the picture, to improve the overall composition. Behind this grouping was the station's
enormous back wall of marble, at least fifty feet high—and beige, I think, although
the photo was in black and white, or even higher—as I held the book at arm's length
so I could appreciate the full expanse of the panoramic scene. But what was the name
of the game I was in the act of exemplifying so dramatically? I peered intently at the
tiny objects coming out of the cup. "Hazard" kept coming to mind, but that was a card
game, I told myself, and what I was throwing from the cup were three-dimensional
symbols that in my pose I couldn't quite turn my head to comprehend.
Portfolio
Three Figures
It was all there, everything that couldn't
have happened any faster, crammed into the
deficient day hanging over from the previous
night. The stories accumulate in the glass,
a vacant monarchy without their inventor.
Squirrel in Tree
The easiest thing in the world to fly
is an airplane. And I don't want
to dwell on that for twenty more years
but I'll talk about almost anything else—
the sand, the illusion, the planks
of wind between the islands confirming
the mosaic. One returns to all this
finally, before the anticipation is
further distorted by reality.
Self-Portrait
I don't think anyone enjoys putting up
a wall more than I do, and then giving it
more coats than necessary. Then comes
the denouement, over the worst cup
of coffee in weeks, and when you have to
take the paint off, you just take the paint off.
Heike with Shoe
The train is due to leave the hotel now
so I'm just going to stay a little longer, while
the desk gets angrier, tossing revelations
in an unalleviated mass to those who could
do without them. My cigarettes are gone
as well so she gives me one of hers.
Old Man at Lake
We followed the car until the license
plate bearing our number was
recovered. In general terms, he was then
released into the furniture, waiting
for the details and when they arrived
he was down at the lake.
Dog Jumping toward Hoop
The cemetery was just part of the paraphernalia
as we weren't expected to expire just yet
in a perforated architecture of theory
echoed in the splendid dungeon of formality
that disables if not debates the solitude.
Homeless Person
When I looked out the window at
the components slowing down in my
tracks, the slowest being the exploits
of tools in the atmosphere. That is
I took them out and put them on
the table: those were the words
I was looking for.
A Quiet Street
And then I remembered something else,
dozing in the dark, when the lights were
elsewhere in the dark, that there was
something incredible in the other room.
Her hand gestured towards it vaguely,
simultaneous with events.
Woman on Sofa
The nickel flew through the air and landed
tails, and my evening, with its terrible
sense of direction, was set for life. And so
that's where life began, on its way to
being picked apart like steamed fish
on a bed or salad of quotations.
Man Making Rabbit Ears
In the meantime that crazy son of a bitch
I was talking about was breaking the yolk
of insane perception over the hapless toast
of my hearing until what was fictional became
a good deal more so. You can't imagine how
happy I was to see daylight, but you can
imagine what I saw.