Masks

Prompt from Sunday Scribblings:

Masks. Literal: making or wearing masks for Halloween, Carnival, Mardi Gras, the theater, any other masky occasion. Or, you know, psychological: a mask you wear, that you hide behind; the face you present the world, or that you present just to one person. Happy scribbles!

M. asks
crazy but wily Marianne
who says she knows such sadness
behind masks,
the perfect housewife, for example,
the perfect mother,
she cannot run far enough
when she gets that queasy feeling
around the kidneys
that somebody’s tailoring a mask for her

M. answers
NO MORE MASKS
I’m sick of hiding
It’s tough enough coming into myself

Pipes in cheerful Maurice,
who just the other day
first wore his ski mask,
then his diving mask
and finally his chameleon mask at a party

Why wear that last one?
M. asks
You are a chameleon in real life,
take on whatever color surrounds you,
reflect any mood,
mold yourself to anything

Why not?
says Maurice,
masks are perfect mirrors
of whatever’s going on
at the time

And that can never be avoided

I am a permanent mask,
perfect incarnation of circumstance and time

– Leon Blumfeld (© 2007)

Mists gave way fib

Mists

gave

way to

full-bodied

blue sky, with languid

white animal clouds drifting by.

– Leonard Blumfeld

From an office

Here I am back home again,
I'm here to rest.
All they ask is where I've been,
knowing I've been West.

– Tim Hardin (from Black Sheep Boy)

... quoted not-so-golden not-so-black-sheep-boy Len, home from the windy North Sea coast. Sad to say, I haven't come to rest (but do we ever, unless it's for that final rest in peace) but am in an office for work. Things happen to be very quiet here, so I can take a minute for blogging.

Quiet, in keeping with the outside: a quiet cloud cover, hardly a sound in the building, the occasional bird chirp through the tipped window.

A duo

I. Nobody knows him

This man
is doomed.
Noone
will ever
know him
for the
wonder-
fully
mediocre
poetry
he wrote.


II. Everybody knows him

And
nobody
knows him
for real.
He wrote
“The
Achiever,
A Poem
In Eight
Acts,”
which
became
famous
because
of the
unspeakable
seventh
act.

– Len Blumfeld

The trepidation rumor

It has been said
that trepidation is unnecessary,
but what other stage
quite so disquieting is there
between serenity, calm,
uncertainty and gloom of doom?

– Leonard Blumfeld

Invigorable note
The trepidation in the signature to the preceding fib demanded to be expounded on. The above rumor is an attempt to do this.

Warm-up fib, May 2, 2007

It’s
thought,
but does
that make it
poetry? Wishful
thought, longing for the poetic
world – part of the world
out there, a
mix of
sun,
shade.

– Leonard Blumfeld (working up to inspiration through some trepidation, but not quite there)

"Chupke Se" music video from "Saathiya"

A song from the film Saathiya by Mani Ratnam (2002), music by A. R. Rahman. Sung by Sadhna Sargam. Picturized are Rani Mukherjee and Vivek Oberoi.

This is in reference to the Hindi chupke se (चुपके से) used in the poem Evil Mood Fib in my previous post.

Actually, though, I had not thought of this song when I wrote the poem, but only of the literal meaning of the expression, which is secretly. And this is part of the lyrics of the song Chalo Na Gori (चलो ना गोरी) by C. H. Atma, an Indian singer popular in the 1950s, I was listening to when I wrote the poem.

The evil mood fib

I’m
in
an eve,
I’m in an
evil mood. Doctor,
take this evil mood off my soul.

Thin
vio-
lin, light
scratches, now
clarinet come in.
To music I fain make appeal.

Doc-
tor
my eyes,
my senses,
I’m fighting evil
mood with uncomprehended words.

Chup-
ke
se. With
stealth. To get
at them. Them who get
to me through clever evil stealth.

– Leonard B.

Notes
Some fairly cryptic poetry served as a statement of feeling and mantra-like speech to combat same.

Talked to N. before. She was in one of her down moods, where she is not amenable to uplift and wants to punish herself – and her surroundings – by looking at bleak things and keeping it that way.

Then my dear M. called to tell of all the cruelty committed against her, laying on more.

Sometimes I get irate with these efforts to load me up. I cannot possibly be the horse to pull all these carts out of the mud. Especially when they attempt to tether me to horses moving in other directions, tearing me apart with conflict.

I’m playing C. H. Atma to combat it, to not be dragged down; this is what I’m talking about here.

Fib not centered to show the sawing process that's going on here.

Goodbye Juan, goodbye Rosalita

When I used the word "aeroplane" in my previous post, it was not without reason. For the last 2 days I've had Woody Guthrie's poem Plane Wreck At Los Gatos in my head. There is a Wikipedia article about the incident that caused him to write it.

The article lists a number of cover versions, but not the one by Odetta, which is hauntingly beautiful and marked my first encounter with the song some time in the late 1970s. Her version starts with "Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye, Rosalita," and she distinctly sings "aeroplane" instead of "airplane."

I was at an Odetta concert much later, perhaps in 2003. She had difficulty walking and had to support herself while singing, but she was as stunning as ever.

Plane Wreck At Los Gatos (Deportee)

The crops are all in and the peaches are rotting,
The oranges piled in their creosote dumps;
They're flying 'em back to the Mexican border
To pay all their money to wade back again

Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye, Rosalita,
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria;
You won't have your names when you ride the big airplane,
All they will call you will be "deportees"

My father's own father, he waded that river,
They took all the money he made in his life;
My brothers and sisters come working the fruit trees,
And they rode the truck till they took down and died.

Some of us are illegal, and some are not wanted,
Our work contract's out and we have to move on;
Six hundred miles to that Mexican border,
They chase us like outlaws, like rustlers, like thieves.

We died in your hills, we died in your deserts,
We died in your valleys and died on your plains.
We died 'neath your trees and we died in your bushes,
Both sides of the river, we died just the same.

The sky plane caught fire over Los Gatos Canyon,
A fireball of lightning, and shook all our hills,
Who are all these friends, all scattered like dry leaves?
The radio says, "They are just deportees"

Is this the best way we can grow our big orchards?
Is this the best way we can grow our good fruit?
To fall like dry leaves to rot on my topsoil
And be called by no name except "deportees"?

– Woody Guthrie

Weather report: shiny, shiny, shiny

The weather I can report on with some lapse because it is stable, near-term surprises are not to be expected. It's the big baby-blue out there, with white streaks from aeroplanes.

The sun is shining down, and this should make me happy, just like everyone else.

Everyone else has been shedding layers.

I'm sitting in my office, feeling cooped up and nervous, as if on crystal lithium*.

Don't worry, I don't even know what that would be like.

Except that I have a nervous feeling. It feels like I should be doing something speedily, lots of things, in fact, to ameliorate the situation, to solve problems, to get rid of work, to no longer procrastinate with the breadless arts.

Don't worry, I won't go into the problems to be solved.

– Yours Lenny B., doggedly trying to remain cheerful in spite of it all

-----

*Borrowed from James Schuyler. He published a collection of poetry titled "The Crystal Lithium" in 1972.

The title derives from the fact that he had to take lithium for balance. There had been imbalances that forced hospitalization.

These imbalances included the incident where he washed money in the bathtub at Fairfield Porter's house, if I remember correctly.