A Poet Was Complaining...

about the American obsession with things, which he saw as spiritually impoverished I guess. He seemed to be making the hackneyed argument that everyone imagines themselves little pharaohs, and thinks there will be an exemption clause in immortality for their things.

I know: what are things?. It's an unformulated question if asked the wrong way and Wittgenstein would take a cudgel to the speaker's head.

Poems are things. Abstractions are things. Feelings are things. The set without any thing in it is a thing.

But I think the poet was was just talking about material possessions.

As if some wise Judge Judy or Anubis of the Underworld will give us all our great shit back when we die, proving once and for all that "He who dies with the most shit wins."

I don't think those people think that.

Nor do I.

I think things are very beautiful (I'm not talking about just art here) and many of the things we collect we do as a spiritual undertaking.

It can be another form of thinking, material thinking...objects can be arranged in logical sentences or even as a form of visual poetry in our environment to structure or liberate our thoughts and help control panic or other negative feelings or emotions.

I mean, that writer's tirade contains a tired argument. Of course, we are things too, we people, and many things are made by people and have people-essence all over them or through them and sometimes these non-human things are almost alive and now we can even "make" some living things.

I'm deliberately talking and thinking like a ten year old here. Sometimes you need to do that to exist in the real world.

So, I thought I would sort of do a miniature manifesto about material things, looking at it from the spiritual side.

Here ya go....


      TOYOCRACY


         The toy
         become the aesthetic archetype.

           --Mina Loy


1. I love it when toys look at me. With those big eyes of theirs. It comforts me more than most poetry, and especially how they smile...because they know they have fallen outside nature.

Just as we have.

These comrades contain enormous empathy.

2. In A.I. the character of Teddy speaks like the Buddha on numerous occasions. He becomes the poem incarnate on several occasions. Teddy is the opposite of embodiment, though he has a body. Teddy is the poem.


The bear who saved the world.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGj608Xe5W4

3. I hold a porcelain dog with goofy circus aspirations. All his children are long melted away into death. He approaches the gauntlet of immorality with an artifactual brio.

4. But we don't exist without you... they say to try to assuage us. Like an unconvincing lover.

And then they smile when we turn our back.

As tired as some poems coming to us across centuries, but performing...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAu7qalhTSE

5. The Sta-Puff Marshmallow man pencil sharpener from Ghostbusters has molecules cycling in a different way, less organic, less attackable...the electrons in the outermost shells won't be lost as readily as those in our cells. Ours leach off much more easily, constantly...oh, the compromises of carapace!

He is tight as a koan under there, his eyes like musical fermata signs, his lips a red minus sign.

6. Mortality fidgets. It's amazing they don't shout at us to shut up.

7. You can destroy one of us. Or some of us. But you can't destroy all of us. We're your mother, anyway. And why would you treat your mother like that?

The Poet.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1nxETblSi4

8. When a toy dreams, watch out...

9. When a toy looks into a poem, it sees a mirror. And it sees itself as human. And turns away, horrified. And is saved.


The toy is the perfect embodiment of the precipice. Here is the poem, er precipice.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMxGaay11pw

10. The erotic is just one sort of clothing the toy can put on its bodies. And I do mean the plural there.

11. There is an Anti-Pinocchio story out there, the boy that wants to become unreal, a toy, but the toys tried to keep it from us for our own protection. Poets break through this parental wall, however. To their own chagrin and detriment.


"But I can't come with you"



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1FclWo0Qbs

12. Bruno's (Hello Kitty before Hello Kitty)Miffy's mouth is a mesmeric "X," as if her mouth has been sewn shut or sewn on. But which is it? Miffy makes a spiritually protective gesture for us. This is really just Horus-Harpocrates with the finger held to her lips, returned to earth.

Miffy wants children to guess the secret of all matter.

Children love Horus-Harpocrates and will carry her new bunny incarnation around dangling from their little hands.

13. Altamira. Shakespeare. Blade Runner. Tamagotchi. Sanrio. Those young soldiers out in California remotely piloting blackwing fighters on bombing missions over Iraq while eating Twizzlers.



"Art is all about separation anxiety.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DHJg4dQC2U&feature=related

14. The honey bear with the google-eyes which are tiny plastic poppy seeds inside clear plastic bubbles. They shake around in there.

A model of the visual.

15. Toys say there is no Toll.


"I apologize that I just can't get started.





http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpcgpldKyyo&NR=1

16. Jeff Koons woke up weeping with joy. The Angel had visited him.

17. Jeepers, creepers....whered ya get them peepers
Jeepers, creepers...whered ya get those eyes
Gosh oh, git up....howd they get so lit up
Gosh oh, gee oh....howd they get that size...



"I'm immortal. And that's no life at all"--Trash Can Sinatras

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1raHbc4_GQ

18. "Point, face, canvas, toy, struck off, sense or, weigh coach, soon beak on, so suck in, and an iron..."--Gertrude Stein

19. Was Stein talking about toys in Stanza XIX of Stanzas in Meditation?

Or factitiousness?

Are they different?

Negative capability doesn't get much more capacious than this.

Not for humans anyway.

I want to go to poet Clark Coolidge for a phrase here: "totality sauce."


     Stanza XIX

Not what they do with not
Not only will they wish what
What they do with what they like
But they will also very well state
Not only which they prefer by themselves
And now add it in aging ingenuity
And which they will as soon as ever they can
But which they tell indeed can they or can they not proudly
Not only theirs in eight but which they meant
They will all old declare
That believing it as a patent pleasure in their care
Nor where where will they go older than not
Nor will they furnish not only which they had but when they went
In reason.
It is often that they allow a cloud to be white
Or not only patently white but also just as green
Not only theirs in pleasure but theirs in case
Not only however but not only however
Or not at all in wishes that they had chickens
Which can be alternately well or ducks
Or will they spread for them alone
Go be not only their care.
This which and whatever I think
I not only do but make it be my care
To endanger no one by hearing how often I place
Theirs not only why they are best not
Not by it as they like.
I have thought while I was awakening
That I might address them
And I thought not at all
Not while I am feeling that I will give it to them
For them
Not at all only in collision not at all only in mistaken
But which will not at all.
I thought that I would welcome
And so I could be seen.
I then thought would I think one and welcome
Or would I not.
I then concluded that I might be deceived
And it was a white butterfly
Which flew not only not but also
The white dog which ran
And they they were accomplished
And once in a while I would rather gather
Mushrooms even than roses if they were edible
Or at least what not.
I do not wish to say what I think
I concluded I would not name those.
Very often I could feel that a change in cares
Is a change in chairs and not only can and cares
But places
I felt that I could welcome in anticipation wishes
Not only which they do but where they do
How are our changes.
When they could fix titles or affix titles.
When this you see hear clearly what you hear.
Now just like that not just like that
Or they will enjoin and endanger
Damage or delight but which they crow
They have threatened us with crowing
Oh yes not yet.
I cannot think with indifference
Nor will they not want me
Do will they add but which is not
Where they could add would or they would or not
For which they for which fortunately
Make it be mine.
I have often thought of it make it be mine.
Now I ask any one to hear me
This is what I say.
A poem is torn in two
And a broom grows as well
And which came first
Grows as well or a broom
Of course any one can know which of two
This makes it no accident to be taught
And either yaught and either fight or fought
Or either not either which either
Can they be either one not one only alone.
Should it be thought gracious to be a dish
Of little only as they might mean curiously
That we heard them too
And this I mean by this I mean.
When I thought this morning to keep them so they will not tell
How many which went well
Not as a conclusion to anxious
Anxious to please not only why but when
So then anxious to mean. I will not now


(one of my favorite Stanzas...)


20. Alcohol is sometimes used to induce a toy-like state. Many choose to die in that state. This mortal coil drives many to become toys.


It won't crawl in and die with you.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oheYr_Vr0UU

21. Toys know children are an agency and are agents. Sent here to...

22. Toy wept.

23. FABLE: A poem and a toy met on a linoleum plain. Each tried to convince the other that it was the the more bloodless one. Each had a name it could easily slip out of, but each denied the other could do that. So they got into a stripping contest right there on the kitchen floor.

When they were both naked, they realized they had a problem.

Neither one has been seen in ages.

24. Are you sleeping?

No, I never sleep.

Are you dreaming?

Yes, I always dream with my eyes open...

What's your dream about?

I don't know, but it's as long as you...

25. The toy turned and went back into the hole which led to its imaginary dwelling.

26.

     Bavaria


The mountain skies were clear
except for the umlat of a cloud
over the village.
The little girl wore yellow gloves.
She looked in the peephole and saw
a stack of unused marionettes.
Yet, she wondered.


      --Mary Ruefle