nothing I would change

During the Spring 1993 semester, I composed a series of "morning poems" which took the form of doggerel glosses scribbled in the margins of my class notes. Only fourteen of the original set of nineteen poems have survived the passing of time; the other five have been lost to various purges, though it is possible that a revised complete set still dwells in the documents folder of my wife's old Packard Bell 386. (Not that I'm in a hurry to find out, as I think the incompleteness adds a certain air of mystery, a la lost silent films and classical texts.)

Of all the things I've written, the morning poems are the things I am proudest of, or rather "least embarrassed by" -- not because they're even remotely good, but because they lack the usual self-consciousness that marks my other written work.

Here's the first entry in the sequence:

Morning Poem #1

Again, my friend?
What could you possibly be thinking
In bringing such a crime against pastry
To the desk next to mine?

A danish, you say?
Nay, it is a coiled turd of dough
Scraped off the sidewalk
And glazed in sugar.

I was present
When the carcass pits were peeled open
And the skies over North Woburn turned ochre
With death's heady perfume.

That charnel house tang
Is balsam and lavender
To the smell of your so-called "danish."
Does your nose not function?

You laugh loudly
In response to a joke by your overpainted doll.
A constellation of soggy crumbs
Sprays from your lips.

My head is hurting.
Your gut must be hurting.
Do us both a favor next time.
Buy a donut instead.

I can't remember the context behind most of scribblings (though I know that the "FROM WHAT I HEARD SHE SHOWED UP LATE AND WAS SHITFACED" scrawled on one of my notebook pages refers to an ex-girlfriend), but still vividly recall my inspiration for the above poem.

It's about a fellow that used to sit next to me in my Intro to Symbolic Logic class. He looked like Huey Lewis with a shag haircut, and was fond of chewing foul-smelling danishes with his mouth open and whispering loudly to his girlfriend, who looked like she fell off the back of some meth dealer's Harley. I have no idea why I chose to vent my spleen though bad verse, but it started a trend of poesy that lasted right up until the end of finals.

Johnny Tillotson - Poetry in Motion (from All His Early Hits - And More, 1990) - "I was hoping for Elizabeth Bishop, but what I got was Sylvia Plath..."

no ice in your lovers walk

This is supposed to by the final day of the heat wave that has engulfed the northeast in its suffocating blanket of haze and humidity, but part of being a Bay Stater born and bred is learning to take what the meteorologists say with a fifty-pound bag of salt. New England weather admits no master, and takes a preternatural joy in confounding expectations. I won't believe we've managed to wiggle out of the Devil's Armpit until I actually see the barometer drop and the feel the cool breeze on my face.

Whenever the temperatures begin to spike 'round these parts, I find myself thinking back to the scorching summer of 1993, back when I used to work the Saturday shift at the college library. Apart from the intrinsic lousiness of having to get up early on a Saturday, it was excellent work -- a 9-to-5 shift in an air conditioned building at a commuter school during intersession.

I worked the circulation desk and the number of patrons I had to deal with during a given shift could be counted on the fingers of both my hands and two of the toes on my right foot, and all phone inquiries answered with one of three standardized responses:

1. No, this isn't the Boston Public Library.
2. No, this isn't Boston University.
3. No, this isn't Puritan Pizza.

The rest of my my time was spent doing some light shelving, surprising the occasional mastubator during a floor sweep, and reading stacks of books and periodicals on whatever subject currently had my fancy. I'm not exaggerating when I state that the bulk of what I learned in college came from my at-work reading. The amount of time I had to kill, combined with a half-dozen floors packed with available reading material, allowed me range far and wide subject-wise with minimal distractions.

History (cultural, social, military), sociology, film studies, art, literature of all stripes, biology, astronomy -- all there for the studying, with no pesky tests or essays to harsh the learning buzz. Plus, sitting under a tree and reading The Stranger and The Plague during a lunch break in triple-digit temperatures really adds to Camus's Algerian je ne sais quoi in a way that can't be imitated in a classroom environment.

(I'm not knocking formal pedagogical methods, as there are certain things, like critical thinking methods, that benefit from the insight and guidance of a skilled second party. The problem is that too many of my college classes were more about gaming the instructor's system than about the actual transfer of knowledge.)

Some of the books I spent the most time with were grabbed from the reference section, which was blessed with an oversized encyclopedia of international horror films, an annotated bibliography on nuclear war fiction, bound volumes of film reviews from 1981-83, and (astoundingly) a copy of the Who's New Wave in Music directory. Taken together, they form an excellent snapshot of my predominant interests circa 1993.

After my shift ended, I'd walk to the bus platform in the late afternoon sun and catch the shuttle to the JFK/UMass Red Line station. From there, I'd take a northbound train to (the pre-gentrified) Central Square, and hike up Mass Ave to Harvard Square on foot, stopping at the various used record stores along the way.

Though I had fallen away from buying vinyl at that point (thanks to Maura's birthday present of a CD player and the emerging flood of CD-only imports and reissues), old habits die hard. There were still plenty of deals to be had on albums that either had missed the reissue bandwagon or weren't worth spending fifteen bucks for the CD version (as opposed to two bucks for a used LP).

My musical tastes were also in flux, gravitating away from punk/hardcore/industrial exclusivity and towards the pop, wave, and postpunk (and by extension, gothic) end of the spectrum. Flipping through my record collection, it's easy to notice the split -- from Sham 69 and company to The Lexicon of Love to Sex Gang Children in a few short steps -- even if I can't remember the specific instances of purchase. (In hindsight, I wish I bought a lot more records than I did.)

When I was done dilly-dallying over yesterday's musical castoffs, I would trek up Mt. Auburn Street to meet Maura at the cafe she waitressed at, where I'd swig discounted Italian sodas and lounge in the Cantabridgian twilight as I waited for her shift to end. From there, another short jaunt on the Red Line and a longer one on the ever-unreliable 96 bus would bring us back to her place, where we'd spend the rest of the evening watching The Kids in the Hall and Mystery Science Theater 3000 on Comedy Central while her rabbits ran riot around the room.

Good times, indeed.

Here's a mini-sampler taken from the aforementioned albums I purchased and listened to back in those days:

INXS - The One Thing (from Shabooh Shoobah, 1982) - A case of partner-to-partner musical osmosis. She taught me to appreciate INXS, I taught her to appreciate the Abrasive Wheels.

Bauhaus - Dancing (from Mask, 1981) - Spasmodically gyrating around the borderlands of postpunk, pop and perentiousness.