Lake Thot & On The Table larry goodell
a duende e-booklet 2012 po box 571 placitas, new mexico 87043 larrygood@comcast.net
Lake Thot
Every time I think about it I think thinking thoughts, that you take the guts out of something if you take the letters out of the word: taking u-g-h out of thoughts turns it into lighter thots that's hard to convey except in written words or talking about it. In any 1
other language would it be the same? Thoughts break icebergs into cocktail icecubes a thousand times a second and a second time around the world of Cuban Libres. Rum and Coca-Cola! How different we are when we think we're the same. But thots 2
t-h-o-t-s don't destroy no iceberg, not even break an ice cube, but thots might melt butter, might spread over water like oil, clean oil in just a few droplets that refract rainbows back at you, taking a drink on the side, looking down into what you 3
dreamed, the lighter side of things simply reflects the densest, the heaviest subject of all: total extermination. Or is life not worth living. Don't tell a severe arthritis sufferer that: you're lucky to be able to use your hands, you use them all the 4
time, you're lucky and star-blessed, though the stars don't know it, or maybe if you stick with t-h-o-u-g-h rather than tho, tho I don't know, hell, I like tho, t-h-o....... Well maybe the stars do know, tho I doubt it, I think saying something out loud 5
will prevail, just ebb over a little bit and flow but I don't think it will drown the silence of the written word, what has power. Meditations by a lake, a body of imaginary water that is flat and reflective, for Arnold Schoenberg, 3rd of August, 1989. 6
On The Table
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Christmas is big when they got there, they snorted. And having come out of Hello Germany! they departed. The English came through the TV set to set the tree and the Lithuanians decorated it with Chinese lampoons. The wreath was made of a hanged man's noose decorated with Lord Barnacles. Dickens walked naked into the whorehouse and ordered a whore. America declined. The Christmas plum was Bob's specialty, and everyone 8
assembled to encourage the Americans to eat it. Finally Bush relented and devoured the red cherry, the red vermouth and the red herring. Santa Underworld stole the North Pole and converted it into a South Pole underground theater. Wild orgies later they got up to go to church and everyone moved to a small town. There they grew up together singing Jingle Bells, Jungle Norms, let's go out and play. Without some attempt at decency or 9
rather manners or rather eliminating so much greed there wasn't any reason to say grace. So they turned their lawns into gardens and the flowers into fruits and vegetables and the wonderful meal rose up from the table and said grace for them. It was Christmas dinner with the table turned to Hanukkah with its table turned to the solstice. So the pagans turned into neo-pagans and then post-pagans. The Christians into post-Christian pagans. The 10
Nazis into billiard balls. The fascists into bowling balls. The communists into handballs. The Americans into willing partners. The world into a globe. The debt into gold. The compartments into proud displays of self. Nationalism into regionalism. Art into the world. The World into many. The many into more. More into less. Less into less. Lessons into practice. Concerts into theory. Music into entertaining the spheres. Whispers into 11
magic. Concrete into voluptuaries. Overpopulation into bad planning. The earth into a magnet. The spheres into planets. The planets into stars and stars and stars. Hope into the nation. Us into one of many. One of many, enough. Many, drunken under the stars. The world of plants and animals into dreaming they are real and equal to us. We into them, just watching. Ready for the dinner they lay out on the table. 12
larry goodell 13
photograph of Mirror Lakes at Bottomless Lakes State Park just outside Roswell, from the New Mexico State Parks Division “On The Table� is from Agave, poems 1989
duende e-booklet 2012 po box 571 placitas, new mexico 87043 larrygood@comcast.net
Lake Thot & On The Table larry goodell