Fried okra is not a vegetable. It’s cornmeal in drag. (jmn)
He’s determined to shoot himself in my foot. (jmn)
The student decided I wasn’t serving his needs and resolved to take it out on himself. (jmn)
It’s hard not to feel the way you do. (jmn)
“Nothing slowly happens.” (Pound)
(Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)
*On the Song of Songs*
Bernard of Clairvaux
B
You are my subject, scraped from the womb.
Will we cross in Limbo, sad progenitor and aspiring heir?
Who will survive?
I have been scoured from your mother’s eyes
as resolutely as the tides tear their pound of continent.
You came in a blush of sheets[,]
A curious tongue fathomed her, found you between her lips[.]
Do you get me or shall I father you?
(Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)
Can peace and beauty (opulent) be immoral? Grosse Pointe Shores. Lake Ste. Claire.
(Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)
I admit that’s bad, but not *that* bad. I may breach decorum occasionally (like now), but I try mightily not to breach good taste. I’m sure you can handle the above; being a diffident sort, I wasn’t sure *I* could (the translation, that is; the neck I could handle!). Isn’t this fun? Languages are a dodge.
Darling, you touched me so deeply; your loving is as generous as the description of dying on the lips of an agonist. Unspoken tears claw your eyes; the undertow –; I would simply break in you and leave my best[.]
Clouds like white poodles in the windows.
Carter: “Love must be aggressively translated into simple justice.”
Arrived Detroit Thurs. July 15, 1976.
Written in the 70s, 70s-11. (Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)
(Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)
“What I teach you is nothing. What you learn by doing over and over is where the learning begins.” (Simon Michael)
“Writing poetry is much easier than reading it.” (Guy Davenport)
“Write hard and clear about what hurts.” (Hemingway)
“It is only the dead who have seen the end of war.” (Plato)
“…And continuing to occupy our chambers in the Faubourg Saint Germain, we gave the Future to the winds, and slumbered tranquilly in the Present, weaving the dull world around us into dreams.” (Poe, The Mystery of Marie Roget)
(Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)
“A Refusal to Mourn the Death by Fire of a Child in London,” poem by Dylan Thomas
poetryfoundation.org
This poem is an antidote to the “thoughts and prayers” mantra. It reminds me of Millay’s “Dirge Without Music” in that it challenges shopworn formulas of mourning. When I discovered it — lo many moons ago — I was captivated, first, by its syntax: Four sentences with their periods.
(Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)
Gerry Rattigan is the publican who operates the Thane of Thoth, the watering hole popular among the better sort of denizens of Chichesterton-Upon-Hogg — though, to be sure, it’s also the only such establishment in the village. Gerry customarily nicks for himself a generous tip from the large-denomination note Sir Alistair Chichester drops nonchalantly on the countertop to cover his daily consumption of bitter. The purloined gratuity comes to thrice the wholesale cost of bitter (three shillings tuppence the pint — toss the tuppence in odd years owing to the Regency Levy exemptions for baronial preserves) summed to twice again that multiple.
Question: What does Gerry’s outrageous windfall for his simpering service amount to in a fortnight?
(Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)
The Smallest Black Hole
You wonder what you’d find in a black hole?
Your other sock? A dime? A baby mole?
I’ll tell you where you will find none of those:
In Cygnus X-1 only darkness shows.
A star one hundred times our own Sun’s mass
Collapsed upon itself and turned to gas.
It tore a hole in space I cannot find
A way to understand in my own mind.
A place I cannot draw or get my eyes on,
Where all is lost on its event horizon.
A place where things fall in and go bye bye.
No peep, no burble, not even a sigh
Comes back to notify us of their plight.
Nothing gets out from there, not even light.
Things disappeared for eons. No one missed ’em.
They had been swallowed by a binary system!
Now they’ve found a hole that’s just a baby,
The smallest yet, the smallest ever, maybe.
An X-ray pattern comes from gas white-hot.
It lets them hear the “heartbeat” of the tot.
They hear its heartbeat. Just imagine that!
If only they knew where your sock is at!
References
http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2011/12/17/nasa-satellite-may-have-found-the-smallest-known-
black-hole/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2011/11/19/new-data-provides-a-complete-description-of-a-black-
hole/
(Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)
Drawn and Quartered
“Everything was everywhere.” (Joplin, MO tornado survivor)
It was as if Mother Nature
Had thrown the town under a train.
It skidded hard for good measure,
Smearing acreage with guts and brain.
Uncle Alvin would do a snake
Encountered in the road that way.
He said, “Swerve quick and put a back
Wheel on it, brake on that bad boy.”
Half hanged, cock-chopped, de-balled, headless,
Pulled apart is how they died
In Merry Olde England’s justice,
Braked on alive and liquefied.
Nature taught Alvin and the Queen
How to make a good disaster:
Be thorough, merciless, and mean —
Fuck the town, the snake, the bastard.
(Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)
EthicalDative 