Hello! to the concerned ones.
I apologize that not much has changed–the site has kind of languished for a while, unmoderated and suffering plagues of spam.
So I’m going to fix a thing or two, and add some more poems. In the meantime–I apologize–I’m not sure if anyone can post. But never fear, have patience, give me a second.
Hooray/ Sincerely.
The apricot
Alfred Nobel was a clean man.
I shook his hand,
And he wiped it on a handkerchief—
then, on an apricot
“The apricot,” he said,
“is a natural cleanser. Its enzymes
calcify and categorize
and neutralize the particles of dirt.”
Before he walked away,
I placed a “Kick me” sign
on his back, and a “Do not disturb”
sign on his stomach.
I ask you: which is more accurate?
Aching out an existence
When I worked for the Nobel Prize committee,
they told me, “No employee of the Nobel Prize
committee nor any member of his/her immediate
family may win the Nobel Prize.”
I threw the carbon proofs for my poem-book
Aching Out an Existence into the Baltic Sea.
Then it hit me: “What about Erik Axel Karlfeldt?”
I jumped in headfirst.
It was warmer than I thought it would be. Still,
it got colder than I imagined.
My landlady Eva swears under and over her
breath, pouring pitchers of hot water on my head.
“Is it salvageable?” I ask.
“Don’t worry your pretty little head,” she says,
then walks to the radiator, flips my pants like
a pancake. “You know, Karlfeldt was given the
award only posthumously,” she says. “Or maybe
that was the effect you were going for?”
“No, ma’am,” I say. Then, “How can I put this…
Could you pour some hot cocoa mix into the bathtub?”
Lampshades and door-hinges
When I worked for the Nobel Prize committee,
polishing lampshades and door-hinges, I overheard
them in their secret chambers.
Someone said: “I think that I shall never see
a poem as lovely as Ingrid Bergman.”
Someone said: “A poem should not mean, but be.”
Then he spilled his coffee on his stomach. I had
to clean it up.
Someone else said: “A fine poem should have
several layers—but only in the wintertime. In
summertime, a poem should have only one layer,
if that.”
Old McDonald
When I worked for the Nobel Prize committee,
they gave me a Visa card, a rain-slicker, and fifteen
weeks to find the man who wrote “Old McDonald
[Had a Farm].” “We want to give him the Nobel Prize.”
“For literature?” I asked. “For literature, chemistry, peace—
it doesn’t matter. Ee,” he said. “Aye,” he said. “Oh,”
and then he sighed—an eighteen-second sigh. I’d never
heard anyone sigh for so long.
I couldn’t leave soon enough. I slept that night
at the Nobel Prize hotel. At 2:30 a.m. the telephone
rang. “Have you left yet?” “No.” “There’s a taxi
outside the lobby, continental breakfast in the back
seat, and slippers underneath your bed.”
I went first to Vasterhaninge, because it was on
the way. I pulled the taxi over to buy some gas. A dog
approached me with a “Woof-woof,” followed by a man,
with a “I hear you are looking for Edvard March.”
“Who?” I asked. He pulled out a gun. “Get in the car.”
The car was a ’79 Cadillac Seville, black, with
leather interior, anti-lock brakes, power-steering. “Calm
yourself,” the man spoke. “The revolver is merely to
emphasize my point. It’s not even loaded—see? My
mustache isn’t real, either.” I nodded.
“Edvard March is the man you seek, the man who
wrote the song you know so well. I am Emil, emissary
of the Catholic Church.” “But why?” “The church desires
to make him a saint.” “Really?” I said. “Yes. The church
does not joke around.”
I licked my lips with my tongue and rolled my eyes
backwards to think. “To be a saint,” I said, “you have
to be dead?” “Yes, for one year.” “Hm.” (I still wasn’t
sure if the prize could be given to dead people, beside
Karlfeldt.) “Hm.” I didn’t know what else to say.
Emil continued: “You might be interested to know
we’ve been studying his life in this vicinity for two months.
So far, ‘Things are looking up,’ as you Americans say.”
“To be a saint,” I said, “you have to do three miracles.”
“Yes.” “What were his miracles?” “Ee,” he said. “Aye,”
he said. “Oh.”
The maple bars
When I worked for the Nobel Prize committee,
nothing in life was free—not even continental breakfast
at the Nobel Prize Hotel. Milk: twenty-five cents.
Maple bars: fifty cents.
After wiping my mouth with a newspaper, I pretended
to read the newspaper, so I could sit in the chair longer.
One story went: “Numerous hail-worthy scholars insist
vehemently, within inches of their lives, that one reason
van Gogh killed himself was craziness from sucking on
lead-poisoned paintbrushes…”
These same scholars, dressed in their pajamas,
carrying briefcases, walk right past me every day—
sucking on fifty-cent maple bars, painting maple bar
paintings.
The cliffs of Dover
When I worked for the Nobel Prize committee,
I moonlighted as Alfred Nobel’s chauffer. Once
I drove up an exceedingly high mountain. It was
my idea. His idea was: “Just drive around. I need
to be alone for a while.” Then he got out.
But I got stir-crazy, waiting in the car. I joined
him on the edge of the cliff, dangling his feet over
the edge (except his shoes were nicer than mine).
“Howdy-hoo,” I said. “It’s a long way down.”
He was expecting me to say something like that.
To make conversation, I offered him fifty dollars
if he’d tell me the secret formula for nitroglycerin.
“Well,” he said, “frankly, it’s too complex,
and I’m tired.”
I offered him a swig from my canteen of rasp-
berry lemonade. “Thank you,” he said. We took
turns drinking in silence, for an hour.
I had intended to push him off the cliff and steal
the money in his wallet, and the car, but his fine
social graces won my disreputable heart.
Left and right
I asked Alfred Nobel why they only give out
prizes once a year. “If I was in charge, I’d give
them out left and right.”
To my left, waiters in pencil-thin mustachios
moved like morning traffic. To my right: traffic
out the window, bumper to pedestrian.
Alfred Nobel said, “Allow me to answer your
question with another question.” (That’s when
my defense mechanisms kicked in.) “How many
suns do you see in the sky?”
“One.”
“And how many moons?”
“Do you mean in a leap year, or a regular year?”
“Either one. One.” Then a waiter interrupted.
“Would you care for some dessert?” “Actually,”
said Nobel, “might we have the check?”
“I don’t get it,” I said.
The human head cannot fathom more than one
or two items. We may only have one or two famous
philosophers: Plato, Aristotle. Only one scientist:
Einstein. And one or two artists: van Gogh, Picasso…”
“What about René Magritte?”
“What about René Magritte?”
The golden heart
Alfred Nobel
had a pocket-watch of gold,
worth its weight in gold—
that is clear.
He also had a heart of gold,
worth its weight in gold.
That is more complex.
In the jungles of the Congo,
an elephant thrust his tusks
through Pasteur’s heart.
A voodoo priest found him
and pitied him,
and sealed up his heart with gold.
(He had been given gold
in exchange for directions and medicine.)
If any man deserves a heart of gold,
it is Alfred Nobel—
but, also,
it makes his heart heavy.
Koko in the bathtub
When I worked for the Nobel Prize committee,
a telephone wire lashed out in a rainstorm and
latched onto my roof. I heard the sound, but didn’t
know what hit me until Hélène telephoned.
“How can that be?” I didn’t want to believe it.
“How can we be talking on the telephone right now?”
She guessed that wire was okay.
“What a bad time to be wearing steel-toed shoes.
And why, of all days, did I choose today to mop
the floor?”
“Because,” Hélène says, “you dropped that jar
of butterscotch syrup when we had ice cream sundaes.”
“It was a rhetorical question.”
And what a bad day to give Koko the Monkey
a bath. It was a personal favor to Alfred Nobel.
He wanted Koko clean as a whistle when they gave
Penney, Koko’s trainer, the Nobel Prize for science
and Koko the Nobel Prize for peace.
“Come on, Koko. Time to get out,” I said. “It’s
not safe to be in that water.”
“Five more minutes.”
He thought he was Jacques Cousteau dive-bombing
a plastic squid. For a second there, I thought I was
Benjamin Franklin, discovering electricity, flying
the kite of Koko the Monkey.
Memphis, Tennessee
When I worked for the Nobel Prize committee,
I thought that was enough to prove to the folks
back in Memphis, Tennessee that I was no shifty-
eyed, no count hoodlum.
I’d write to mother every week, detailing
conversations with Alfred Nobel, Marie Curie,
Louie Pastuer—a different invention or theory
every week!
She wrote back: “Tell me when something
important happens—like inventing a cow that
milks itself. The yellow-bellied Socialists.”
One week Antoine LaVoisier took me aside.
“I have a present for you.” Then unveiled a
bird-cage. “Well, what do you think? A chicken
with the outer, protective covering of the armadillo.
“That, way, no predator—no dog or raccoon—
can eat the chicken! The chicken would be extra
succulent and spicy! I thought you, of all people,
would appreciate this—being as you are from the
bread-basket of America…”
At that moment, I became suddenly tired.
LaVoisier shifted from one leg to the other,
and it seemed like an automobile driving down
the highway, from out of my vision to out of my
vision, and that sound.
George Washington
When I worked for the Nobel Prize committee,
a little girl frolicked through the Nobel Prize gardens,
touching each individual calla lily on its head,
intoning “Duck, duck, goose.”
“What child is this?” I thought. I wondered
where her mother was. (I wondered where my next
meal was coming from, two weeks from payday.)
The little girl stumbled on a statue of Louis Pasteur,
knee-deep in morning glory. She looked up at his
face and said, “George Washington.”
“No,” I thought.
She stumbled on a statue of Albert Einstein,
surveying the Baltic Sea. She looked at his face
and said, “George Washington.”
“No, no,” I thought.
She drifted towards the statue of Alfred Nobel
holding the hand of Koko the Monkey. “Little girl!”
I said. She turned. I grabbed her arm just in time.
“Hey, what’s the big idea?” she said.
“We’re going to find your mother.”
“Why?” she said. “Ow, stop it. You’re hurting
my arm. Who do you think you are, anyhow—
George Washington?”
The coal-mines
Alfred Nobel worked in the coal-mines
on his days off, to remember his roots. His face
was always dirty—partly from working in the
coal-mines, and partly from eating chocolate cake.
One day I sat in his drawing room, leisurely
drawing monkeys with monkey-like features,
but with cat-like eyes!
Alfred Nobel looked over my shoulder.
“I like it,” he said. He left chocolate smudges
on my drawing and my shoulder. I could no
longer restrain myself.
“Of all the clumsy—” I never finished my
sentence, but he must have guessed what I was
thinking. He left the room in tears.
I found him outside, behind the old tool-shed,
scouring his face in the bird-bath, and scowling.
“Alfred Nobel,” I said. “Where will the
birds bathe?”
He dried his face on a towel. “That’s none
of your business.” (He had not yet learned to
control his temper.)
Later, walking by the bathtub, I heard strange,
squawking noises coming from the bathtub.
The Laboratory
When I worked for the Nobel Prize committee,
my heart wasn’t in my work. I was secretly glad
when René Magritte’s petition for a prize in the Visual
Arts was turned down.
But then the Nobel stock fell. Morale was low.
Alfred Noble no longer went driving to clear his head.
His head got cloudy as the aftermath of Krakatoa.
“It looks like a volcano about to explode,” I whispered
to Koko the Monkey.
But cloud formations shift. “It looks to me like
a sailboat in-between Scylla and Charbydis.”
“What do monkeys know?” I said.
I was working overtime in the primate laboratory
to pay off some gambling debts (meaning credit
card debts). The last statement had flowers and a
14-karat gold xylophone—anything for Hélène.
“You have to get over her,” said Koko. “Come
on. Lay your head on my shoulder. Like a bridge
over troubled water. I will lay me down.”
I wondered who kept changing the radio station.
Alfred Nobel wants it on classical, for the plants.
The betrayal
When I worked for the Nobel Prize committee,
Alfred Nobel told us, “One of you shall betray me,
before the rooster crows.”
My heart fell from my rib-cage. I figured it
would probably be me, at the rate I was going,
with the luck I was having at the time.
Everyone asked, “Is it me, Mister Nobel?”
including Koko. Everyone looked at their watches
or the floor—the sundial and shadows on the floor.
Suddenly, a gaggle of roosters flew in through
the window, crowing and crowing, like Peter Pan,
a dime a dozen!
Greg Vermeer, head maitre de at the Nobel
Prize restaurant and a good friend of mine, ran in,
breathless. “I’m sorry, Mister Nobel, sir. This
won’t happen again.”
That night, I ate my lemon chicken in silence.
Also, I ate peas and cabbage, although I said
to Greg Vermeer only two days ago, “No more
peas and cabbage.”
Peace that surpasses some understanding
When I worked for the Nobel Prize committee,
I was completely at peace. Some helicopters
wavered above my head while I slept, but they
were so far away it sounded like a butterfly.
I maybe changed positions in my sleep—
twitched open my eyes, but then shut them.
The helicopters, doubtless, were looking
for me and Koko the Monkey. A crack team
of evil scientists wanted to use him for their
evil designs, to speed up the tide of evolution.
In addition, a crack team of noble scientists
wanted Koko to thwart the cold fusion bomb’s
development with his electromagnetic brain-waves.
Every inhabitant of Stockholm wanted him
for his or her private reasons.
I asked Koko the Monkey, “What do you want?”
He said, “To swim in the Baltic Sea.”
The day before I got fired
When I worked for the Nobel Prize committee,
Alfred Nobel invited me to maple bars and choco-
late. How could I refuse?
I admired his calm demeanor and cuff-links.
He chewed every bite of maple bar several times
and wiped his mouth on a silk handkerchief.
“Let me be perfectly honest,” he said. “It’s
not that I dislike you. I do. You have a certain
‘moxy,’ as you Americans say—a je ne se quois,
from the French. Snille o’ smak, as we say here…”
I thanked him politely. Then said, equally
honestly, “I like you also. You have a certain—”
[I fumbled around in my head]—“dignity.”
“Yes,” he said. “Dignity. Thank you.”
He breathed.
“This dignity is a hard thing to come by.
It is the fruit inside a jar which Koko the Monkey
tries to grab—but if he grabs, cannot release
his hand from the jar.”
“Yes,” he said—the shadow on his face ticking
from four fifty-nine to five o’clock. “I have
longed for this dignity all of my life.”
After fourteen years
When I worked for the Nobel Prize committee,
they fired me, after fourteen years. (Alfred Nobel
didn’t have the heart, but my shift supervisor did.)
“The truth is: the prize-giving business is slow.”
“Really?” I asked.
“Yes. The trouble is we have to give money away,
but we have no source of incoming revenue.”
“Oh,” I said. “Then how have you paid for
the money so far?”
“Mostly from selling broken bottle-caps and
dog-collars. Want to buy a dog-collar?”
“No, thank you,” I said politely.
“How about some batteries? In any case,
we don’t have any money to give you. However,
we could pay you in vodka.”
“Truly?” I said.
“Yes. ‘Vodka’ is Polish for water.” Then
he smiled.
“Well,” I said. “Like water for chocolate.”