Words in the Air

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Soon

by Joe Bolton

Soon, these great stadiums will be empty,

Standing coolly at twilight, lit only

By the twilight, and there will be no sound,

No echo, and no memory of sound.

Soon, these mansions along North Boulevard

Will fall into disrepair, then will fall,

Their foundations given over to grass

Under the vaulted naves of the live oaks.

These freeways won’t dream of rush-hour traffic.

These towers won’t give you the time of day.

These storefronts won’t show the season’s fashion.

Nobody will try to take your money.

Soon, no one will remember how it was

To drive home at the end of the long day,

To hear a song you thought you’d forgotten,

To sleep and rise and not know quite what for.

And no one will remember what it was

To try to live and love and make love live

In these times we belong to but call ours,

Near the end of what looked like forever.

after Horace

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Pillow

By Jana Prikryl

How solitary

and resolute you look in the morning.

A stoic in your cotton sleeve.

Do you dream of walking out

rain or shine

a truffle balanced on your sternum

and passing me on the sidewalk?

Or is that a smile

because you interpret nothing

and statelessness is where you live?

How calmly you indulge my moods.

See you tonight, by the sovereign chartreuse

ceramics at the Met.

Let's hear what you'd do differently.

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

SMOKE
By Philip Levine
Can you imagine the air filled with smoke?
It was. The city was vanishing before noon
or was it earlier than that? I can't say because
the light came from nowhere and went nowhere.

This was years ago, before you were born, before
your parents met in a bus station downtown.
She'd come on Friday after work all the way
from Toledo, and he'd dressed in his only suit.

Back then we called this a date, some times
a blind date, though they'd written back and forth
for weeks. What actually took place is now lost.
It's become part of the mythology of a family,

the stories told by children around the dinner table.
No, they aren't dead, they're just treated that way,
as objects turned one way and then another
to catch the light, the light overflowing with smoke.

Go back to the beginning, you insist. Why
is the air filled with smoke? Simple. We had work.
Work was something that thrived on fire, that without
fire couldn't catch its breath or hang on for life.

We came out into the morning air, Bernie, Stash,
Williams, and I, it was late March, a new war
was starting up in Asia or closer to home,
one that meant to kill us, but for a moment

the air held still in the gray poplars and elms
undoing their branches. I understood the moon
for the very first time, why it came and went, why
it wasn't there that day to greet the four of us.

Before the bus came a small black bird settled
on the curb, fearless or hurt, and turned its beak up
as though questioning the day. "A baby crow,"
someone said. Your father knelt down on the wet cement,

his lunchbox balanced on one knee and stared quietly
for a long time. "A grackle far from home," he said.
One of the four of us mentioned tenderness,
a word I wasn't used to, so it wasn't me.

The bus must have arrived. I'm not there today.
The windows were soiled. We swayed this way and that
over the railroad tracks, across Woodward Avenue,
heading west, just like the sun, hidden in smoke.

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

4 A.M.

by Kenneth Fearing

It is early evening, still, in Honolulu, and in London, now, it

must be well past dawn;

But here, in the Riviera Cafe, on a street that has been lost and

forgotten very long ago, as the clock moves steadily toward

closing time,

The spark of life is very low, if it burns at all.

And here we are, four lost and forgotten customers in this place

that surely will never again be found,

Sitting, at ten-foot intervals, along this lost and forgotten bar,

(Wishing the space were further still, for we are still too close

for comfort)

Knowing that the bartender, and the elk’s head, and the portrait

of F.D.R.,

(All gazing at something of interest beyond us and behind us,

but very far away)

Must somehow be aware of us, too, as we stare at the cold

interior of our lives, reflected in the mirror beneath and in

back of them.

Hear how lonely the radio is, as its voice talks on, and on, un-

answered;

Notice how futile is the nickel dropped in the juke-box by a

customer,

How its music proves again that one’s life is either too humdrum

or too exciting, too empty or too full, too this, too that;

Only the cat that has been sleeping in the window, now yawning

and stretching and trotting to the kitchen to sleep again --

Only this living toy knows what we feel, knows what we are,

really knows what we only think we know.

Soon, too soon, it will be closing time, and the door will be locked;

Each of us will be alone, soon, with something ravaging for

a name --

(Our golden, glorious futures, perhaps).

Lock the door now and put out the lights, before some terrible

stranger enters and gives, to each of us, an answer that is

the final truth.

They say the Matterhorn at dawn, and the Northern Lights of

the Arctic, are things that should be seen;

They say, they say --------- in time, you will hear them say anything,

and everything.

What would the elk’s head, or the remote bartender say, if they

could speak?

The booth where last night’s love affair began, the spot where

last year’s homicide occurred, are empty now, and still.

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

The Pomegranate

By Eavan Boland

The only legend I have ever loved is

the story of a daughter lost in hell.

And found and rescued there.

Love and blackmail are the gist of it.

Ceres and Persephone the names.

And the best thing about the legend is

I can enter it anywhere. And have.

As a child in exile in

a city of fogs and strange consonants,

I read it first and at first I was

an exiled child in the crackling dusk of

the underworld, the stars blighted. Later

I walked out in a summer twilight

searching for my daughter at bed-time.

When she came running I was ready

to make any bargain to keep her.

I carried her back past whitebeams

and wasps and honey-scented buddleias.

But I was Ceres then and I knew

winter was in store for every leaf

on every tree on that road.

Was inescapable for each one we passed. And for me.

                   It is winter

and the stars are hidden.

I climb the stairs and stand where I can see

my child asleep beside her teen magazines,

her can of Coke, her plate of uncut fruit.

The pomegranate! How did I forget it?

She could have come home and been safe

and ended the story and all

our heart-broken searching but she reached

out a hand and plucked a pomegranate.

She put out her hand and pulled down

the French sound for apple and

the noise of stone and the proof

that even in the place of death,

at the heart of legend, in the midst

of rocks full of unshed tears

ready to be diamonds by the time

the story was told, a child can be

hungry. I could warn her. There is still a chance.

The rain is cold. The road is flint-coloured.

The suburb has cars and cable television.

The veiled stars are above ground.

It is another world. But what else

can a mother give her daughter but such

beautiful rifts in time?

If I defer the grief I will diminish the gift.

The legend will be hers as well as mine.

She will enter it. As I have.

She will wake up. She will hold

the papery flushed skin in her hand.

And to her lips. I will say nothing.

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

The Whole Mess ... Almost

BY GREGORY CORSO

I ran up six flights of stairs

to my small furnished room  

opened the window

and began throwing out

those things most important in life

First to go, Truth, squealing like a fink:

“Don’t! I’ll tell awful things about you!”

“Oh yeah? Well, I’ve nothing to hide ... OUT!”

Then went God, glowering & whimpering in amazement:  

“It’s not my fault! I’m not the cause of it all!” “OUT!”  

Then Love, cooing bribes: “You’ll never know impotency!  

All the girls on Vogue covers, all yours!”

I pushed her fat ass out and screamed:

“You always end up a bummer!”

I picked up Faith Hope Charity

all three clinging together:

“Without us you’ll surely die!”

“With you I’m going nuts! Goodbye!”

Then Beauty ... ah, Beauty—

As I led her to the window

I told her: “You I loved best in life

... but you’re a killer; Beauty kills!”  

Not really meaning to drop her

I immediately ran downstairs

getting there just in time to catch her  

“You saved me!” she cried

I put her down and told her: “Move on.”

Went back up those six flights

went to the money

there was no money to throw out.

The only thing left in the room was Death  

hiding beneath the kitchen sink:

“I’m not real!” It cried

“I’m just a rumor spread by life ... ”  

Laughing I threw it out, kitchen sink and all  

and suddenly realized Humor

was all that was left—

All I could do with Humor was to say:  

“Out the window with the window!”

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

For the Sleepwalkers

by Edward Hirsch

Tonight I want to say something wonderful

for the sleepwalkers who have so much faith

in their legs, so much faith in the invisible

arrow carved into the carpet, the worn path

that leads to the stairs instead of the window,

the gaping doorway instead of the seamless mirror.

I love the way that sleepwalkers are willing

to step out of their bodies into the night,

to raise their arms and welcome the darkness,

palming the blank spaces, touching everything.

Always they return home safely, like blind men

who know it is morning by feeling shadows.

And always they wake up as themselves again.

That’s why I want to say something astonishing

like: Our hearts are leaving our bodies.

Our hearts are thirsty black handkerchiefs

flying through the trees at night, soaking up

the darkest beams of moonlight, the music

of owls, the motion of wind-torn branches.

And now our hearts are thick black fists

flying back to the glove of our chests.

We have to learn to trust our hearts like that.

We have to learn the desperate faith of sleep-

walkers who rise out of their calm beds

and walk through the skin of another life.

We have to drink the stupefying cup of darkness

and wake up to ourselves, nourished and surprised.

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Late Spring -

By W.S. Merwin

Coming into the high room again after years

after oceans and shadows of hills and the sounds of lies

after losses and feet on stairs

after looking and mistakes and forgetting

turning there thinking to find

no one except those I knew

finally I saw you

sitting in white

already waiting

you of whom I had heard

with my own ears since the beginning

for whom more than once

I have opened the door

believing you were not far

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

In the Corridor

By Saskia Hamilton

I passed through, I should have paused,

there were a hundred doors. One opened.

In there, someone whose name

is not yet known to me lived out

his middle years in simple terms, two chairs,

one place laid for early breakfast, one plate

with dry toast and butter softening. There

his mind raced through writings

he had memorized long ago while he tried

to get hold of himself. Once

in his youth he had studied with love

in the corners of old paintings

matrices of fields and towns,

passages intricate and particular, wheat,

columns, figures and ground,

classically proportioned

in lines that were meant

to meet, eventually,

at vanishing point. They continued,

nevertheless; they troubled the eye.

He collected sets of books printed

in the nineteenth century, unyielding

pages, memoirs of the poets,

engravings of rurified private subjects

in times of public sector unhappiness,

frescoes of human oddity in gatefold printing.

Why does it continue

to chasten me, he says to no one.

It does. It is a painful mistaking,

this setting something down,

saying aloud, “it is nothing yet”

when he’d meant, not anything—

but then nothing peered

through the keyhole, nothing

took possession. Snow on the roofs,

snow in traces on the ground,

passersby with wet trouser-cuffs

looking to the pavement as the hill rises,

light gathering in the river

and gradually spreading.

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

A Certain Lady

By Dorothy Parker

Oh, I can smile for you, and tilt my head,

      And drink your rushing words with eager lips,

  And paint my mouth for you a fragrant red,

      And trace your brows with tutored finger-tips.

  When you rehearse your list of loves to me,

      Oh, I can laugh and marvel, rapturous-eyed.

  And you laugh back, nor can you ever see

      The thousand little deaths my heart has died.

  And you believe, so well I know my part,

    That I am gay as morning, light as snow,

And all the straining things within my heart

    You'll never know.

Oh, I can laugh and listen, when we meet,

    And you bring tales of fresh adventurings, —

Of ladies delicately indiscreet,

    Of lingering hands, and gently whispered things.

And you are pleased with me, and strive anew

    To sing me sagas of your late delights.

Thus do you want me — marveling, gay, and true,

    Nor do you see my staring eyes of nights.

And when, in search of novelty, you stray,

    Oh, I can kiss you blithely as you go….

And what goes on, my love, while you're away,

    You'll never know.

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman