he couldnt hear her over the racket

he couldnt hear her through the dead space  the walls

the acoustic in the old house were lousy

and their roommates consumed their words jealousy   unforgivingly

emerging into the hallway

walking out towards the livingroom

--   Im sorry  I was in the bathroom taking a leak  I couldnt hear a word you said

and she repeated for the nth time what she had said

never 

 --    If you would just listen to me when I speak

at first blush it was irritating

but you learn things when you move in with people

learn unseen or unrevealed habits

that maybe the only way you ever would would be by moving in together

but they had learned

they learned they could shut them down by simply acknowledging them

everyone wants to be heard  not ignored

they were no different than anyone else

but the dead space  from room to room  was hard to tolerate

not that there was a choice

inadvertently  and not a bad lesson  they learned to speak face-to-face only

eyes-to-eyes

as people should when they address to one another

not that vacant hideous gaze  off elsewhere  as weve all done  when the fake-listening 

machinery kicks in and the head goes into mechanical programmed nods

funny how that nod is so similar to the nod ones head makes when they are falling into 

slumber                                                                                                                           

while watching TV reading or at class ambitiously scheduled too early in the morning

she repeated herself

and he was glad he asked

she had this keen possession and way of looking at things he hadnt imagined

she refreshed him endlessly

far more often than she tread on him

their conversations were spirited

they were passionate  quick-tempered  confrontational

but they knew that of each another

they learned their roommates were abrupt too

demonstrative

HAD to captured their attention

if it was waking them  to then whisper to them

brushing their cheeks as they slept 

or stomping around in other rooms long after they had turned into bed for the night

although

                the dead has limited venues and has to be resourceful

1346,  Monday,  21  4. 14

              the deeper

the deeper we sound

                        obscure notes tantalize our ears

               held Whole  they force a howl that paints foolish space

      or are stabbed to death by staccato

                                                                       splashing slick gobs on humid walls

and then desperate to hide their flinty steel

deeper

and deeper

our eyes and noses are negligible  blinded and stuffed

we try to touch our original foundations

                                                                  although they are lost    there were no thoughts

or imagination that they could be preserved for future suns because their lives

were so very tenuous  lacking surety   without a founding for themselves

                                                                                                                        so our basis 

is spoiled

its remnant  like dried clay  resists reconstitution     it rides like fractured ash on misted

beads

            it seems irradiated    it shimmers with reflections

deeper

I have tried to sound my own depth   my earliest reckonings   but they elude me as 

perhaps they should 

                                   I am extemporaneous  they have no need of me

I think I need

though I know I want

and this wanting is no reason to be met

deeper

deeper

I should be satisfied   I am

begun 1120, Monday,  5  8. 13

from Thomas Mann’s Joseph and His Brothers: “The deeper we sound, the further down

into the lower world of the past we probe and press, the more do we find that the

earliest foundations of humanity, its history and culture, reveal themselves

unfathomable.”

lager

some liked lager

it went down like a drunken fuck without kindness or memory

and either as easy as taking a piss

his dad  he loved lager

a cheap canned lager

it passed his lips as easily as the word nigger

                                                                             which made him scratch his head 

because racism wasnt in his upbringing                                                                  

and he couldnt imagine anything that was unfortunately learned couldnt be unlearned

particularly by a smart man                                                                                             

and his dad exhibited considerable smarts

                                                                            it left him to surmise his grandfather 

was the bigot who perhaps swore his dad to a blood oath

to be unrelenting

it reminded him of black and white photographs of Ku Klux Klan rallies and the young 

childrens faces captured in the flickering torch light or bonfires or bright burning crosses

Knights they called themselves

Knights who hid their identity under floursack hoods

whose photographs reminded him of the Scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz

                                                                                                  “. . . if I only had a brain”

L. Frank Baum might have been a subtle genius   or he had again given a man far more 

credit that he deserved

hed credited his dad all his life

though  obviously  his objectivity was skewed by being too close to the subject

love is a lousy lens to view anything through

if he forced himself to be dispassionate

the evidence was overwhelming

if he were serving on a jury and instructed a guilty verdict could only be reached if he 

had no reasonable doubts

Knew the mans intention

Knew what the man was thinking at the moment  of the commission  

                                                                                                                     of his crime

he could not be persuaded to vote not guilty

the strict accountability he learned was from his dad

                                                                                          you sleep in the bed you make   

it was so easy

even a child could remember

1830,  Sunday,  11  8. 13