Blickstein noted to me in his original (and only) submission that “If you can’t use anything, or hate it, let me know, I’ll still like the website and the stuff you produce. If it takes you over a year to respond I’m come over there and kicking some butt! I’m a 6’ 7" 260 lb afro-hebraic-cherokee lunatic—watch it…
Around the same time as my son's expulsion event mentioned in my previous post I received some lines of verse from a fellow poet by the name of J.J. Blickstein. In 2009 I took on, as an experiment, a long poem he had submitted to a forgettable online literary magazine I was temporarily editing, and I re-wrote his poem as an exercise similar to what I made my son perform in 2002. Blickstein noted to me in his original (and only) submission that “If you can’t use anything, or hate it, let me know, I’ll still like the website and the stuff you produce. If it takes you over a year to respond I’m come over there and kicking some butt! I’m a 6’ 7" 260 lb afro-hebraic-cherokee lunatic—watch it…
All half kidding aside, I appreciate your time and consideration of the material..”
J.J. Blickstein’s complete submitted poem is as follows:
VISION OF SALT AND WATER
You want to go back to all the places where you lost something, back to the streets and memories, where you lost something. Not to correct what was, not to change what was, but to cure it. The doors in the house face each other; in through one, out through the other; it’s a bad omen. It’s bad weather. A woman laughs. Your shoes become guns. Sleep. You want to sleep, but you can’t kiss the switch. Your dreams are troubled. The daylight is without factories. No suffering. You’ve got time to look forward to. You’ve got time. You don’t know. You won’t see them coming. You won’t see their hooks. Their conditions are soft. There ain’t no whale. No cell. No kindness. Metaphysics are dog food and plants. Nature is outside. The
closer you get the farther you are. There’s a wound in the river. The mule
won’t walk the desert and the people at the banquet won’t call you by name. You give them another name, like betrayal. You dream about the Chinese and their penchant for cataloguing stones and shells wore down or squeezed out by the elemental colleagues. You dream about the emperor whose madness was
counting. You dream about a world without musical instruments and the dream makes sense. You dream about brass coffins filled with lead, the hands on the glass, the teeth and lip of the half seen pupil whose breath drips down the glass evading your night. The house with all the lights makes you unhappy.
II.
Stones are lined up against the ledge. You push them off the great wall, off the pyramids and the buildings. You close up the caves, give back all the gold. All keys become useless. You decorate the locks. Open all the
mouths. There’ll be no need for singers. No strangers betrayed. This ain’t
Europe. There’s water everywhere.
__J.J. Blickstein
Blickstein’s bio probably should have scared me, but it didn’t. I imagine, if what he claims is true about his massive size and indigenous lunacy, he might be a bit frightening up close. But I never did publish his poem, nor my own revised version of it printed below. There is not much in my poem that resembles J.J.’s original, nor his intended meaning, as my bastardized version obviously reeks with the thud of my often serious undoing.
Not Since I Left Alabaster
Shoes have become guns. Dreams are as troubled as daylight without factories. Your mule will not walk in this desert and the people at the banquet refuse to call you by your right name. You consider the Chinese and their penchant for cataloguing stones and shells worn down or squeezed out by elemental collage, the emperor whose madness was counting, or brass coffins filled with lead. The teeth and lips of the pupil whose breath drips down invades your night. There is water everywhere.
For J. J. Blickstein
__M Sarki