Two Ghostly Jobs

—for Josephine Patrick*

The restaurant’s full of people. Wow 
I’m gonna enjoy this, I say to myself. 
But I wish you were here to attend your 
Own death anniversary party: Ghastly! 
It’s full of people who really know your 
Father who’s really the celebrity here, 
You weren’t considered society like 
Your father. He still has his factory.

You go work at that factory now you’ll
See how he’s treating us all today, now that
You’re gone, now that nobody’s running 
Our cause, but why did you ever have to
Get smashed by unknown persons at your 
Pop’s factory? You had this restaurant.

—*Josephine Patrick became the companion of the Filipino American fiction writer and unionist Carlos Bulosan. This poem is not about her as much as it is about what her persona in the fictional picture represents as a native daughter of neoliberal America.8

A Materialist Dialectic (An Americanized Foreword)

Taking away your
                                 silver dower,
Show me now the sandwiches.
Show me
                   working electricity.

And tell me no fantasy
                                        lurking
In the factual, some magical
          geometry. For

Is there any way to avoid, escape
          our arrival
At the knowledge that we
          are all each
                              a composite of atoms

That will later change into another?

We’re . . .
          are living in the finest

Hours, showing us
All the flowers,
Showing us
All these structures . . .

Telling us all energy
Functions with a marginal
Dependency—i.e., in wavering
Religiosities/
                    And is there—

Are there really ways of enhancing . . .
Is there any truth in “romance” or
Or . . . no survival really
From the knowledge

That we
                are all

Each a composite of atoms
That’ll later turn into another!

   Well, dowry-giver, . . . you gave me fine containers of wine
        and meat.
     Then we changed cars to one with another color:
          and how can I forget the quest of-
               of making it through

                                        the present way of Asian dragons?

               where Mechanics, Science, and other labels,

                                 have still only

                                 gone as far

                                 as one’s

                                 desire

                                 could

                                 see.

—23 May 1988

Paramaterial Dialectics

1. All Inner Walks are Outdoor Walks

A pedantic paradox, even this corporeal
Thing, a crystal ball you hold in your hand.
Though theoretical is weighed, considered
As a compass to a pole treasure for Mani.

“Badness!”—you laugh; I say, is it not
Objectified, like the wanted man without
Whom we’d be left wanting, mere wanton
Vandals set free outside example boxes?

The invisible good is here, we believe.

2. Immaterial Dialectic

Immaterial, not. By itself is already
contentious, for conflicts have materiel.

3. How

What does it matter?
Is it matter or what?
Where? How’s it made?
And, really, as what?

4. Why, You Say

Why? ‘Cause the poorest
Questions, asking proofs
Of existence, or of death-
Proof qualities, are already
Matters of life and passing.

5. Behind the Skulls

Beyond the mechanical, neuroscientific poetry.
Beyond political realities, utopia, fantasy,
Where each ghost makes cups and plates float,
Upholding boredom with sheer materiality. 

6. Therefore, Paramaterial

Material argument, not purely.
Immaterial, neither. Each of these
words, these poems, is begging for

proof, but of horror! Or beauty!
The significance of which begging
is in its calling upon a city of gods.

—April 2010

Alternative Prosaicnesses

In spite of the ongoing Congressional investigations over sub-standard dikes and national ghost projects and so on, . . . today I am still starting the blog-posting of my oldest poems, opening with the virtual-last-page piece "Alternative Prosaicnesses" from my first virtual poetry collection eponymously titled Alternative Prosaicnesses, a collection first self-published online in 1999 and re-published (again exclusively online) in 2009 under the same title but containing only the first half of it. As an online book, both collections were made available for free. I am therefore making it available for free reading again today, returning the collection online, one refurbished poem at a time. Without further ado, here is that virtual book's virtual-last-page poem, which was added to the collection as a title piece in 2013:

Alternative Prosaicnesses

I’ll lay it all down like a Proustian fountain sprout
from an involuntary spring of spontaneity, however
the lines shape themselves from Mondrianesque
atria.
Each leap
will welcome wanton jeers from purists and precisians,
them there partying with their bias, like stockbrokers
and fiscal polygyny, oh bulbous am I with my helium.

Every story that pours out of the woodwork is sweat
of some purple prose, fruitage to rococo buffs and
baroque bulls, jazz to the fanciful, puzzle to pedants,

putrid nonsense to your legalese or journalese or . . .
Have you heard from Helen? Has she phoned us
yet from Troy? So do I digress, as is my wont, . . .

Worm. That’s me. Call me Proem or Pee. But do not
make the mistake of thinking me dull or dodo-esque,
being Mondrianesque in my prolificacy or industry.

In the end I’m only like you, who tend to go round and
round in a calculus of thought that may never come full
circle to a halt like you’d hope for. But that’s the idea.

I’m essaying points not to extend your agony, sorry,
but to apprise you, prosaically but briefly, of the reality
of the situation, these abject objects’ objecting to our

contemplating in words gods. That Helen? I’ll take it.

— February 2013