Tal Shafik

It felt as though he was flipping a switch, but mentally, in his mind. He was actively making judgemental decisions about matters for which - at least for him - there was no fundamental debate regarding their inherent worth or lack thereof.

“I love weddings!” he tried yelling to himself, over and over. “I love and wish to meet hundreds of strange people.”

It worked to some extent, but naturally not all the way. It was and will remain a matter unselfishness, of being a good human, even when it implies a temporary suspension of Self.

It had somehow gotten into the apartment, and lay dying on the kitchen floor. It was still breathing, and every few seconds it would attempt to twist around, to somehow get up, as its tail slapped the tiles like a miniature bullwhip.

He stood there for at least five minutes, just gaping at the ending rat on the floor, until realizing he should probably put it out of its misery.

He was surprised at how fleshy the rat’s body felt as he drove the broom handle down
like hitting a small child
and was suddenly gripped with nausea, preventing him from landing a powerful enough blow. He cried a little after the fourth swing, when the hitherto silent rat actually squealed in despair.

He held the broom above his head, panting, crying, staring at the dead rat on the floor - a small puddle of blood slowly forming around its mouth - and took comfort in knowing that he could never be a killer. Not really. He could intellectually accept killing, maybe even understand it at some level. But he will never truly feel it.

He sat at home, awating the inevitable dinner. “We’ll be reading from the Legend this year,” they tell him. “Be nice.”

And he will. He’ll stifle himself when they start chanting. he’ll hold back when they sing. He’ll pretend to know who these people are. He’ll smile at the utterly senile bicentennial woman sitting next to him, as she hands him a piece of Mazzah with a trembling, twiglike hand.

In the meantime, however, he sits and enjoys late-night television. These are the movies that go straight to TV. These are the movies that made him feel sorry that there are only so many words for “awful”. He’d sometimes think about the directors and writers of these movies. He’d wonder if they’d been happy with the final result, smiled at each other, or even patted themselves on the back in a really pathetic “good job!” way, like one would say about a retarded monkey’s finger-painting.

“Are you a fighter?”

“Who wants to know?”

Actual lines from the jail yard scene, in which the new inmate - wrongfully accused, one can assume - finds himself hasseled by the resident prick.

He cried after that scene. He cried for demented old women with shaky hands. And for the directors and writers. He even cried for the retarded monkey. But not for the Israelites in the desert. He didn’t cry for them at all.

She sleeps.

His cool, dark sanctuary is spontaneously constructed, enveloping him in comfortable silence. Here he can taste insanity in peace.

He deletes.

He sits in the dark, the smoke from his cigarette illuminated by the white page on the screen, the same page he’s been trying to fill for weeks. Prior to his arrival, he’d asked the strange multi headed Indian beast running the nearby shop what the price of milk was. He told her that something, eventually, will have to make sense. After all, life could not possibly be a series of nonsensical happenings. “There’s just no other option!” he exclaimed. He bought the milk anyway.

She sleeps.

Parts of him are dying, others are reborn.

He sleeps.

He imagines applying for a job. The man asking the question is a fat, sweaty pig of a man wearing a suit that must have cost about as much as ___ would have spent in a month.  The questions seem arbitrary and random, and - in his mind - fail to capture any real significance regarding his skills or attributes. He writes the essay portion of the application over and over, changing this word or that, focusing on his “Greatest Moment”, as the directions point out. Walking with his friends, seeing the truck pull up in front of the old store-house near his apartment. Watching as they empty the truck of his first printed edition, and thanking his good fortune for the fact that his friends were there to see and share his triumph.

He rewrites the essay, again and again. The number of friends is greatly exaggerated  in every new version, the quality of content improving exponentially with each iteration. And the pig of a man appears in the back seat of the truck, and ___ can see him laughing violently, his shoulders shaking, eyes watering. He points at ___, who’s bewilderment swiftly turns to a raging embarrassment. The gun, forever providing him with an oxymoronic yet comforting synergy of danger and security, starts vibrating in his pocket, alive with the burning hatred  he now feels for the fat, laughing pig in the back seat. He fires six times, breaking the rear window and hitting the pig in the back of his oversized head. ___ Imagines himself back in the room, surrounded by the cold and comforting quiet he has grown so accustomed to, no longer knee deep in pig’s blood out in the unforgiving streets of the world.

There is a club. And they sign up and become full members of the club. And they get a membership card. It has their names on it and “Member” in big, black letters. It even has a magnetic strip. And they have many friends at this club. They all get invited to parties. And at these parties they get envelopes and in the envelopes are notes. The notes contain a single address. They show off their envelopes to their friends. They are then instructed to drive by that address at any and all hours of the day and wildly honk their horn when they reach the only window that is still lit at 4 in the morning. Because this is the “Honk Your Horn like a Crazy Idiot When I Reach His House” club, where everybody knows his name.  He also gets the occasional truck driving through his bedroom. Not as bad as it sounds, but it’s pretty loud.

He was haunted by trees. Collosal Baobabs and Ents incessantly tearing at him with twining limbs, their branches and boughs eviscerating, interlocking around his throat, gauging his eyes. An afternoon strole in a shaded avenue had become a horrific ritual of escape and evasion, as they ceaselessly attempt to drain him of any coherent thought. “There is logic in the formation of our branches,” they tell him, but their words are sawed apart by his screaming. He will not hear of such things. He will not learn the structure of his demise from a psychotic, perennial shrub.

She’s here.
Her presence
(and his awareness of it)
Soothes him like a cool liniment.
She will always be here,
Always love him.

He sits and stares:
Reliving, no foreign imagery allowed.
It’s his medicine, and he takes comfort
In what remains of
Her in the closet.

I will be focusing on this monstrous poem for the rest of the semester. Having studied mostly romantic and victorian poetry texts so far, I’m excited about a much more modern form of petry, and am currently thinking of the value (or lack thereof) in being able to hear the poet read his own poem. Whether by his reading I can perhaps reach certain conclusions or interpretations which are as close to Ginsberg’s ideal as possible. While I do not believe in the existence of an ultimate and total meaning, I do believe that a poet (usually, if not always) has a very clear idea of what he intended to say. I’m counting on it.

Death, stay thy phantoms!

by Isaac Rosenberg

I snatched two poppies
From the parapet’s ledge,
Two bright red poppies
That winked on the ledge.
Behind my ear
I stuck one through,
One blood red poppy
I gave to you.

The sandbags narrowed
And screwed out our jest,
And tore the poppy
You had on your breast …
Down - a shell - O! Christ,
I am choked … safe … dust blind, I
See trench floor poppies
Strewn. Smashed you lie.