The Coming of the Toads

A Notebook – Since 2007

  • Notes on Youssef Rakha’s “The Crocodiles”

    1. Instead of page numbers, “The Crocodiles,” a novel by the Egyptian writer Youssef Rakha, is marked by 405 numbered, block paragraphs, the whole symmetrically framed by references to Allen Ginsberg, the US Beat poet, to his “The Lion for Real,” signed “Paris, March, 1958.”
    1. Opening Rakha’s book, one finds a hand drawn map labeled “The Crocodiles’ Cairo,” which includes a drawing of the head of a lion, which might somewhat resemble, in caricature, the photo portrait of Youssef Rakha that appears on the inside back cover of the book, at least the seemingly ironic smile of both suggests they know something one or the other or the reader may not.
    1. Napoleon’s March to Moscow, 1812: Description. Lineal novel. Variables. How to tell the story? What happened along the way, and back? They were marching through snow, in below freezing temperatures, and you want to know the exact temperature at daily geographical interval locations? Body counts alone won’t tell the story. How to present data and information? Multivariate analysis in a single photograph. How to revision history? On the way back, there were no ramparts, just fields of snow and a sea of time. Napoleon may well have dreamed of warmer days, when he lived in Egypt, of unlocking a language, and of a code that would provide protection for all against the cold. A wise leader rules with allowances, and instead of burning books, gets everyone reading.
    1. In Astra Taylor’s “Examined Life,” Michael Hardt sets out in a rowboat in a privileged pond to argue the meaning of revolution. What does it mean to make revolution? What is the relationship between freezing temperatures, direction, and a line of march that grows thinner with each step each man takes? “Carte Figurative.” Data flow, “one ruling elite replaced with another” (Hardt), credits and discredits following, merits and demerits, kudos and kicks upside the head. Note: Hardt rows backwards – he can’t see where he’s going – at one point “…running aground, shipwrecked.” Figurative language, the hyperbole of revolution.
    1. “Carte Figurative.” Figurative language. Not to be taken literally. And don’t confuse Minard the author (cartographer) with Napoleon the character. Regression analysis becomes necessary. What is the relationship between the author and the narrator? Perhaps none, except that one sees what the other does not. Irony. “The Crocodiles” is a figurative map of multiple variables that attempts a regression analysis to explain past events and predict future probabilities. Note that Rakha is also journalist and photographer; each paragraph of the novel may be taken as a still photograph, a variable, part of a portfolio.
    1. “On the Road” with Kerouac (para. 248) and Bonaparte. My kingdom for a 1949 Pontiac Chieftain. Interactive notes: what was the cost of a 1949 Hudson new using the value of today’s poem to that of a muscle car driven by a youthful single male in 1964? Sal knew to take a southern route on his winter trip: The novel as map of a trip.
    1. Custom as costume. Napoleon as grammarian, his Code a multivariate blending of revolution, revelation, and reform. The novel as procedure that everyone can follow, the interaction of nouns with verbs. Custom as vernacular, empire as formal attire. Due process as drug.
    1. The Beatnik as attitude, beatitude. Jazz as revolution, the novel of improvisation. Notes out of context. Bonaparte’s men dropping (like) seeds (para. 256). Napoleon as lion.
    1. At times, reading “The Crocodiles” is like watching a foreign film with subtitles, because while all the common characteristics of the novel are included (plot; narration; characters – major, minor, dynamic, static, protagonist, antagonist, foil; dialog – though sparse, and blended with the prose, the paragraphs all block formatted; setting – places, times, seasons, dwellings, streets; diction that creates style; irony, satire, and sarcasm), something strange appears, and that strangeness is what the Crocodiles’ group calls poetry: “self-sufficiency…desire…intention” (para. 316).
    1. Like Minard’s “Carte Figurative” of Napoleon’s march to and from Russia (1812-1813), Rakha’s “The Crocodiles” is a figurative coming of age graphic that plots multiple comings and ages (decades, variables) packed into a single view.
    1. The juxtapositions of disparate subjects and actions (of real Lions with Visions of Lions; of Beats with Crocodiles; of poetry with prose; of people with bridges – para. 80) connote something new, new views: the flower children having dropped their petals now sticks of thorns (“just ask the nearest hippie,” Scalia).
    1. Transparency does not necessarily lead to transcendence. Neither honor nor shame stand alone as values, but they are the crossroads at which people gossip, tell stories, barter and eat and drink.
    1. Affinities, themes, motifs: the Beats, poetry, revolution, change, maturation, growth, body, sex, predicament, society, margins (paragraphing, units of composition, sentences), ambiguity, protest, independence, exploitation, reflection, writing, file, premature, people, obstacles, brain, chemicals, women, work, matrix, publishing, poverty and ignorance, position in group, generations (lost, beat, hippie, next), translation, drugs (real and imagined), neighbors, values, wants, needs, humor, music, violence, aggression, excuses, decadence, pop culture, misinformation, criticism, destruction, suicide, sacrifice, counter-culture, lion (cat), crocodile, logic, argument, howl, pain, Ginsberg (Howl and Moloch), dissolution, analysis, invasiveness, love, ambition, relationships, disdain, synchronicity, human nature, signifiers.
    1. There is something too of the noir to “The Crocodiles,” a mystery, with the narrator, “Gear Knob,” whose nickname suggests some 1950’s hard-boiled detective story character, assuming the role of the detective as corrective if not moral force. But noir is cartoon. Or “The Crocodiles” might have been a graphic novel. Instead, it is a poetic novel that breaks with genre convention and creates formal purpose and revisions value, what people want.

    “The Crocodiles,” by Youssef Rakha, 2013. English translation 2014 by Robin Moger, Seven Stories Press, New York, November 2014.

  • Retro Surf Trip

    At their usual spot,
    the point at Refugio,
    the surf was flat,
    so they boogied down
    in the cove,

    the fronds of the palms
    fat and glassy green,
    the rocks at the edge
    smooth with rust moss hair,
    the nose of his board

    thrust up and curling
    and curling in the blue
    air of smiling swells,
    but still the waves
    would not break

    into hysterical laughter:
    “There are no trees
    on the sea,” she said,
    holding a cream white
    pink mophead hydrangea.

    “You look for shade
    under the cool curl,”
    he said, recalling their first
    time – as soon as he stood
    he wiped out,

    his board pushed in
    with the soupy surf,
    he wore no leash,
    paddled out again,
    and she lotioned in the sand.

  • Happy Bloomsday Interview at Queen Mob’s Tea House

    Russell Bennetts, editor extraordinaire (Berfrois, Queen Mob’s Tea House), interviews the Prince of the Toads for his popular series “Poets Online Talking About Coffee.” Head on over for a cup and check it out.

    Below: “The Dance Lesson,” 32 x 64, oil paint and oil pastel over acrylic:

  • Equanimity

    When at last after the long ordeal,
    betrothed to bed, full of ale and meal,
    she knelt and put her face to the must
    of the cedar chest red to her touch,

    she lifted the lid, its hinges oiled true,
    and out came do, I, know, and you.
    She reached for forever which broke apart,
    and with the letters she sewed her heart

    and the lid closed on the squelching words
    help, hero, laugh, and sword.
    “Why me, Lord?” she asked. “Why pick
    me to stick with equanimity? This a trick?”

    Wreath

  • Raspberries and Baseball

    Raspberries

    A bowl of vanilla
    ice cream
    as white as the apple
    of your eye.    		 Topped with
    nine
    lost in the wild
    red
    raspberries.    		 Game-Time Weather:
    Fresh yellow of daisies, not the father orange of July, nor the old man red-orange of August, or still older bleached-orange of Fall,

    not the infant one of March, but the teeming one of late Spring, teasing practical joker.
    One day your scout
    has your attention
    then disappears
    for a week, sends a postcard
    from the Road.    		 “Wish you were here! The sun is a marshmallow on a stick in a fire on the beach, the wave mister going
    ‘Miss you!’”    		 The simple
    raspberry
    crumbling nodes.
    Vestigial poem:
    100 drupelets.
    And here’s the pitch –
    Tart fruit!    		 Swung on
    and there’s a drive,
    deep left center,
    Davis at a gallop,
    dives,
    one hands it!    		 Warm,
    right off
    the green cane.

  • Photograph of Providence Urgent Care Waiting Room at Noon

    Waiting room Center seat Back to window
    Squeeze my fingers Under a bitter blanket Opposite counter
    Vertigo Where? Merry-go-round stops.
    Wall clock running backwards You seem to have crossed some divide, a distance between following expectations and surprising the reference books on shelves marked Must Remain in Reference Room: No Check Outs – For Scholars Only! Those were the days of craves Dizzy and Monk and Bird ears. We never worried ears, blood pressure, what gave rise to touch, an orange scarf, blue waterfall behind bridge.
    Nurse station The nurse walks you to the scale, weighs you, takes yr blood pressure, pulse, and temperature. “The doctor will be with you shortly to hear yr confession,” and she leaves you alone to study the posters of the cross sectioned body pinned to the wall. The doctor knocks and comes in dressed in stole and stethoscope, just like on TV. “I only handle venial issues. Only a specialist can give absolution. But what good is freedom that leads to wild thoughts?”
    Waiting Room Families and individuals. Names called. An ambulance arrives. Para-techs wheel in empty stretcher, disappear into sanctuary. A fire truck appears. Six firemen walk through waiting room like a Rubik’s Cube. Two men in Texas gear waltz across the lobby. A boy plays with the automatic door. His father. His sister figures it out. A yell and a sigh. A woman crumbles at the nurse’s counter, a Beckett ploy that gets her plenty of attention.
    Valet Parking The sign says No Tips. I hand the parking attendant an Ace which he pockets. Good man! The drive home.
    What the Doctor said She wanted to see my pocket notebook. “I knew you were dizzy as soon as I laid eyes on you sitting out in the lobby taking pictures of the patients, word pictures.” In the waiting room waiting continues. Kids run around and play games, laughing. A few people look worried. A couple of folks look hurt, or hurting. A father falls asleep.
     The Clinic Closes for the Day  A husband weeps. A mother changes a dirty diaper.

  • 33 Shades of Green

  • Seaweed Cabbage

    Seaweed at Refugio_4135518072_m

    What was that she said about the skin
    on his hands and forearms,
    seaweed cabbage
    boiling on stove, “That looks bad.”

    Blue dark wet orange oil damp oars drift awake
    dawn dress coffee smoke brown falls upon brown
    slow walk down curved sandy path to the water
    empty nets sea grass tired boats in fresh tide wait.

    Surf sound spooning shingling
    smooth rocks growing on his arms
    that opposite real rocks grow larger
    with each receding tide.

    He thinks about love water
    work moon sleepy fog
    legislated blather laughter
    unrequited smiles.

    He’s not an especially proud man
    unless provoked unnecessarily.
    He has a few books on a shelf
    in the kitchen he touches evenings.

    He thinks severity and frequency
    as all men do capacity purpose
    of hymns folk songs and surf music
    and silence at the end of the path.

    He’s no interests but cars and guitars
    stars in her eyes sand on her skin salt hair
    gloss on her fingernails white
    daisies between her wiggling toes.

    Wave after wave forgotten fishes
    swim past her hands sleeved
    sheathed knives
    embraced recorded let go.

    At the cannery he never did learn
    to stand still that fisherman’s value
    he no longer wanted his friend
    who now fished a desk in Admin.

    The smell of tar and turpentine as he cleaned her feet
    shampoo that smelled like bubble gum
    steel shavings and lead chips the plumber left behind
    carob seeds rotting on fog wet boardwalk.

    Ocean fish air and orange crabs on ice at wood wharf stalls
    after shave and Brylcreem Saturday Night adjectives
    bingo sock hop carnies and a new noun in town
    cool morning breeze on an angel’s moonburned skin.

  • This is not an address.

     (‘`)
    a
    d
    dress
    a peach’s
    dappled red
    lit dimple dot
    if you like green
    leaves shading rust
    rolling in the other way
    round like a fuzzy bulb globe
    plan draw lips over the peach skin
    and rub speak into ink flesh until every
    juice puckers sprinkle. Don’t handle or touch
    this stone. Simply lean in and buss a not waltz,
    like this, but first, take the pipe out of your mouth.

    This is not a pipe
    Why did Rene not close his p’s?

    Peach Pipe
    A preference for peaches over pipes as tastes change over time.

  • A New Denouement Comes to The Eidolon

    A moon rose pure placebo the day
    the dismantlers came to The Eidolon.
    A puppeteer hidden in a hard hat
    worked sticks and wires from a crane,
    his rude yellow wrecking ball
    a scraping bald knuckle
    -hyphenating-
    the yore tony a la mode pink marquee:

    –

    I

    D

    –

    –

    O

    N

    They hadn’t seen a movie there in years.
    Instinct drove to the location
    now hairy with graffiti and wounded windows
    boarded up. “Turn left there,” she pointed ahead,
    and here in the V of what used to be
    a local lemony clichéd Hollywood and Vine
    hung the vertical sign of rainbow chasing lights
    popped and glum, now a moon at noon.

    -OW -LAY-N-

    The wrecking crew worked amid yarns,
    a thrilling tale of piracy, or chivalric ennui,
    beach tar and feathers and a damsel tied to a rail.
    Though no one was actually tied down,
    back in the days of pretend, when make-believe
    waved sun and sea of the bottle bags of beggary,
    and kids danced to the possibilities of being free.

    SW-P -EE-

    They drove across town to watch the razing
    crew with crowbars and heavy metal
    tear down the slumping palatial playhouse,
    where teens once held hands,
    listening to rock and roll bands,
    and before them, kids spent summers in buttery
    fingered and fizzy toothed afternoons
    matinee rapt in spinning film,
    a veteran vaudeville player changing reels.

    -HIS SAT-R–Y

    Nothing could save now the last-gasp plight
    of this episodic imperilment, and the moon fell.
    The two cold cats sat on the bus stop bench
    across the street from the deconstruction,
    a couple of stoned Cupids deprived of sleep,
    sagely reminding one another to be brave
    and behave, lest they be kicked out again
    like the day they adlibbed Beatles
    and lit bee dough up in the loge.

  • Seachange

    SeachangeBlue neon pales the alley and nothing
    calms the woeful sea if won’t come she
    to the window.

    No, too drouged to hear.
    Her golden green hair billows across
    the Motel Fregata bed, and deep her
    foghorn bellows mute in pillowed sleep.

    So solo out off the beam down to the coaly beach,
    flip flop in shallow cool pools, lured by a small moon coin.

    Up the beach a fire spits, a bottle breaks, and a guitar flashes.
    Over the wooden trestle, a harmonica passes.
    The surf hisses yeses as from the rocks a wiggly piss-take.
    Boon a mist sleeks in, so tack-back to the warm room.

    Seaweed wrapped around orange plastic curlers,
    with foam jelled fingers that collect flotsam and jetsam
    and want some. Curls taped to cheeks and brow.

    She was a beachcomber scavenging in kaleidoscope
    curly cuffed bell bottoms, passing
    across blond sand dunes
    where she learned to stretch and yaw,
    surfing loose blousy waves off breezy reaches,
    coasting through town down to the beach
    on a one speed lazy bicycle, surf mat under arm,
    red-orange towel slapping behind, salted hair curling,
    tangling kite wagtails, waves gushing the beach,
    curling around sandcastles where sand crabs
    and children bubble and fizzle in the foam drizzle,
    no wonder of the surfer’s troubled faith in waves.

    Wet and salty wind full in our wrinkled faces,
    we swim out, hold hands through curling waves,
    dive, burbling breathless under waves,
    fall and turn and spin with the waves,
    hear the waxy epizeuxis of waves.

    By the coyest hairs we argue, liking to talk
    while we surf, something about a tiger shark and riptides,
    an illuminated jellyfish, a juicy green sea anemone,
    and a Brobdingnagian turtle as old as the ocean.

    We lock fingers in curls and pull to the curling top,
    your oily fisheyes turned to my qualmy cockeyes.

    A swell rises to a wave of oyesses,
    we kick and touch and tussle for air,
    and the wave breaks into foam and washes us in,
    prone in repose in the rushing foam.

    Gaviota early 70's